This CSS file is used in conjunction with ../js/bootstrap-datatables.js to tweak the DataTables plugin to work with the Bootstrap table styles and layout This is your minimum initialization code: $(document).ready(function () { $('#example').dataTable({ "sDom": "<'row'<'span6'l><'span6'f>r>t<'row'<'span6'i><'span6'p>>", "sPaginationType": "bootstrap", "oLanguage": { "sLengthMenu": "_MENU_ records per page" } }); }); See the following article: http://datatables.net/blog/Twitter_Bootstrap_2