[Steve_Ray]

Does the cell contain graphics? This can make a difference.

No graphics at all.

Since posting I've realized that in the latter part of my inquiry, adding
'space above' wouldn't have the desired effect because even though the text
in the cell is vertically directioned, 'space above' would only affect the
horizontal dimension.

However, that still doesn't clear up the main issue having to do with text
that's in the normal horizontal direction, but appears differently (i.e.,
with different horizontal positioning relative to the cell borders) in
different cells even though they are all formatted identically.