How to have partially italicized columns in pdf output?

Question

This question is related to Creating a data frame that produces partially italicized cells with pkg:sjPlot functions

I'd like to have partially italicized cells in a kable. I have tried

library(tidyverse); library(kableExtra)

sum_dat_final2 <- list(Site = c("Hanauma Bay", "Hanauma Bay", "Hanauma Bay", "Waikiki", "Waikiki", "Waikiki"), 
                   Coral_taxon = expression( italic(Montipora)~ spp., 
                                             italic(Pocillopora)~spp., 
                                             italic(Porites)~spp., 
                                             italic(Montipora)~ spp.,  
                                             italic(Pocillopora)~spp.,  
                                             italic(Porites)~spp.))

sum_dat_final2 %>%
  as.data.frame()%>%
  kbl(longtable = F, "latex")

and got this error Error in as.data.frame.default(x[[i]], optional = TRUE) : cannot coerce class ‘"expression"’ to a data.frame

Many thanks in advance!!

Answer 1

You may italicize specific parts by adding $. In this sense, you need to set escape = F on your kbl function.

```{r}
library(tidyverse); library(kableExtra)

sum_dat_final2 <- list(Site = c("Hanauma Bay", "Hanauma Bay", "Hanauma Bay", "Waikiki", "Waikiki", "Waikiki"), 
                   "Coral_taxon" = c("$Montipora$$~$ spp.",
                                   "$Pocillopora$$~$spp.",
                                   "$Porites$$~$spp.",
                                   "$Montipora$$~$ spp.",
                                   "$Pocillopora$$~$spp.",
                                   "$Porites$$~$spp."))

sum_dat_final2 %>%
  as.data.frame()%>%
  kbl(longtable = F, "latex", 
      escape = F,
      col.names = c("Site", "Coral taxonomie"))
``` 

--output