The cell has white space so you find out that you should have applied the shading to the cell, not the paragraphs. Imagine you have applied shading to the paragraphs in a table cell. This may make it more difficult to find out what causes white space in cells.
You can also apply different types of shading to the same cell at the same time. Not only can you apply different types of shading to table cells. What happens if you apply mixed shading to a cell? As mentioned above, the cell shading white space issues only seem to occur in Word 2003 and earlier versions. Note that the text in the upper-left cell consists of one paragraph which has been applied the listed settings.
