How to Prevent HTML Tables from Becoming Too Wide
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200704/how_to_prevent_html_tables_from_becoming_too_wide/

Johansson, Roger
456 Berea Street
2007

Abstract:

The layout model of tables differ from that of block level elements in that they will normally expand beyond their specified width to make their contents fit. At first that may sound like a good thing – and it often is – but it makes it possible for oversized content to make text unreadable or completely break a site’s layout, especially in Internet Explorer.