First lets make it look more like a table and give it a border. Every time you make a change and want to see how it looks, you can hit the Reload (or Refresh) button on your browser. Every so often, a change you've made doesn't seem to "stick". In that case, hold the SHIFT button and hit Reload.
<TABLE BORDER=1>
<TR>
<TD>Ed</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
Ed
How about a bigger border?
<TABLE BORDER=5>
<TR>
<TD>Ed</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
Ed
How about a HUGE border?
<TABLE BORDER=25>
<TR>
<TD>Ed</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
Ed
How about NO border?
<TABLE BORDER=0>
<TR>
<TD>Ed</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
Ed
As you can see, the default is (usually) no border.
Let's stick with a modest border for now.
<TABLE BORDER=3>
<TR>
<TD>Ed</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>
Ed
When no sizes are specified the table is only as big as it needs to be.
<TABLE BORDER=3>
<TR>
<TD>Ed, Rick and Tom</TD>
</TR>
</TABLE>