title: Is there a way to colspan a table header with GitHub flavored markdown?
body: <p>HTML allows extending a table's header row across multiple columns using <code>colspan</code>:</p>
  
  <p><div class="snippet" data-lang="js" data-hide="false" data-console="true" data-babel="false">
  <div class="snippet-code">
  <pre class="snippet-code-html lang-html prettyprint-override"><code>&lt;table&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th colspan=2&gt;Logical Operators&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;&amp;&amp;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Logical and&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;||&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Logical or&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;!&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Logical not&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
    &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;? :&lt;/td&gt;&lt;td&gt;Logical ternary&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
  &lt;/table&gt;</code></pre>
  </div>
  </div>
  </p>
  
  <p>On GitHub, when this HTML is rendered in a readme.md file it looks like this:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/wouge.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/wouge.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
  
  <p>...but <a href="https://help.github.com/articles/organizing-information-with-tables/" rel="noreferrer">using markdown syntax to create a table</a>, I can't span the table's header row across columns, e.g. I can only split up the header text:</p>
  
  <pre><code>| Logical | Operators |
  |:---:| --- |
  | `&amp;&amp;` | Logical and |
  | `\|\|` | Logical or |
  | `!` | Logical not |
  | `? :` | Logical ternary |
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>...and rendering the GFM table on GitHub looks like:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/N53Fb.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/N53Fb.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
  
  <p>I tried emulating <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/42091054/5225057">this solution</a> for using <code>colspan</code> in the table's data rows, but I could not get it to work with the header row. Is there a way to span the <a href="https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Cheatsheet#tables" rel="noreferrer">GFM table's</a> header row across more than one column with GitHub flavored Markdown?</p>
  
  <p>I've posted the question to the folks at the <a href="https://github.com/github/markup/issues/1151" rel="noreferrer">GH MD repo</a>.</p>