title: HTML table row vertical struts *shorter* than the row height
body: <p>How can you get table row vertical struts (shorter than the row height), or partial table cell borders, or table row bottom/top margins, like this? :</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/XFzpR.png" alt="vertical white struts are SHORTER than the row height"></p>
  
  <p>This is what I got from the graphic designer; as you can see the table row background (dark or transparent) is somewhat out of sync with the rows themselves so don't cling to that too much (background is irrelevant here).</p>
  
  <p>The key, however, is that the <strong>vertical white struts must be shorter than the row height</strong>.</p>
  
  <p>One idea that comes to my mind is to insert dummy rows to the HTML table, but it sucks doesn't it?</p>