[Benjamin Barrett]

Word automatically inserts a 0.5 line before each paragraph when I create a
new table.

Word claims that this is the "Normal" style, but my normal style does not
have this specified. Nothing else seems to be available. How do I tell Word
to stop this behavior?

Using the "Remove space before paragraph" is available but does not work for
this. The work-around is to click on the lower right arrow in the Paragraph
ribbon section and specify 0 for the space before the paragraph.