Append takes the list (or expression) as its first argument, and the thing to append as the second.

So when you showed Append[{" "},array1], I wonder if you meant Append[array1, " "].

Also, what format of table were you hoping to get? That wasn't clear from your original post, especially since you're starting from a 1-dimension list. I just wondered if you meant a a 2-row table where the first row is blank, and the second row is the contents of array1, or if you wanted to split up array1 into into 2 rows with 5 columns, or just what you wanted.

One way to ask this is to hard-code the final output that I wanted, and then ask what code could take me from the input to that output.

Sarah,

Is this what you are trying to achieve?

array1 = Insert[array1, "", 1]

{, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,