I am using CoreText to render multiple columns of text. However, when I set the first letter of the 1st paragraph to a bold, larger font than the rest of the text, I incur 2 issues (both visible in the attached image):

1. The spacing underneath the first line is too big (I understand that this is because the 1st character could be a g,y,p,q etc.
2. Lines below the first line now do not line up with corresponding lines in the next column.

Any advice on how to overcome these 2 issues would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/u5znh.png)