This is how to create a semantically sound table for tabular data. Also a bit of history on 'tabular layout'

Tables

Tables used to be used a lot in the bad old days of html 4, as they were used to do the layout for each page. This was a bad idea for countless reasons, but most of all, that once you had embedded all your content in a big nest of tables for — say — 50 pages, it was not a lot of fun if you tried to redesign your site. They were also completely inaccessible to anyone but standard web-browser users.

These days tables are (should be?) rarely used, and when they are, they should be used for 'tabular data'. Like this:

Animal foods

Animal	Food	Country
Lion	Meat	Kenya
Owl	Mice	England

this page links to Divs and css primer