Various techniques more precisely and reliably (a) position top and bottom boundaries of a region of background shading, (b) position left and right boundaries of a region of background shading, (c) define a region of background shading that is applied to Chinese, Japanese, or Korean characters, and (d) apply a clipping path to achieve an arbitrarily-shaped region of background shading. These techniques allow background shading to be applied to textual content precisely and reliably, and also reduce the likelihood that unwanted visual artifacts are introduced into a digital publication.