Unexpected behaviour when with HTML Table rowspan

I am creating a dynamic table generator, and during testing, i found that the following generated HTML gives an unexpected layout in all browsers (firefox, chrome, ie) 

    <table>
        <tr>
            <td rowspan="2"></td>
            <td></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td rowspan="2"></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td></td>
        </tr>
    </table>


I am expecting a 2x3 table, with top corner merged with the left cell in middle row, and and the middle row right cell merged with the bottom right cell but instead i ended up with a 2X2 grid

side note, even if I provided a height on the css or the row/cell attribute; doesn't change layout of the resulting table.

p/s i don't intend to use this for layouts; i just will like to idiot proof my codes from unintended effects from weird layouts such as this
Unexpected behaviour when with HTML Table rowspan
===


I am creating a dynamic table generator, and during testing, i found that the following generated HTML gives an unexpected layout in all browsers (firefox, chrome, ie) 

    <table>
        <tr>
            <td rowspan="2"></td>
            <td></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td rowspan="2"></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td></td>
        </tr>
    </table>


I am expecting a 2x3 table, with top corner merged with the left cell in middle row, and and the middle row right cell merged with the bottom right cell but instead i ended up with a 2X2 grid

side note, even if I provided a height on the css or the row/cell attribute; doesn't change layout of the resulting table.

p/s i don't intend to use this for layouts; i just will like to idiot proof my codes from unintended effects from weird layouts such as this