How do you write specific data to an HTML table?

At what point does editable tabular data in HTML stop semantically being a table and start being a form?

• Say for example you have a small table of key/value pairs, like a person's personal details.  It would seem to me that an HTML table would be a semantically correct way of marking this up.  However if you make the value's editable, could you still consider the data tabular enough to be marked up using a table?  In that case, is something like a contact form not just technically a list of key/value pairs, and therefore tabular data?

• Answer:

  I don't think a table is the correct way to go. If you are asking for user input, you really should be using form elements. Tables are supposed to be used in presenting information, not collecting it. Tables are also not supposed to be used for layout purposes. Therefore I think what you want is a form. You could use CSS to create the look you want, but I think putting a form within a table is semantically incorrect and I would imagine also offers less accessibility.