To specify a straightforward table without needing to input all the wikicode required (in particular the |- row divisions).

{{Table
|type  =        // default: style="background:transparent;"
|title =     
|hdrs  =        // first header !! second header !! ... 
|row1  =        // first cell's contents {{!!}} second cell's contents {{!!}} ... 
...
|row100 =        // last possible row
}}

All parameters optional.

{{Table
|hdrs=Timeline
|row1=2001 Started research
|row2=2002 Published findings}}
Timeline
2001 Started research
2002 Published findings
{{Table
|type=class="wikitable sortable"
|title=Example Table Two
|hdrs=Year!!Comments
|row1=2001{{!!}}Started research
|row2=2002{{!!}}Published findings}}
Example Table Two
Year Comments
2001 Started research
2002 Published findings

Inexperienced editors may confuse this template with the manual way of making tables, and mix the two, or otherwise make odd mistakes. For example, this text (that accomplishes nothing) may appear within a page's wikimarkup: {{table}}. To prevent this from occurring, a message is displayed to the user instructing them about misuse. Also, the page is added to the Articles using the table template incorrectly category. After the initial cleanup (all instances of {{table}} were removed), it seems unlikely now that someone would use this template wrong because of the warning message. But keep an eye on that category, just in case!