Background text off-centered in Essential Graphics

I was re-assigned from Pr Graphics to a different PrPro dev team a while back so I don't get to browse Graphics specific topics on the forums nearly as much as I used to. So, sorry if I'm too late to this discussion. Let me respond to a few things I read above:
(1) What you @Mario37140797pky9 are seeing is an inherent of how fonts or designed and displayed in most Adobe apps. The background is using the center of the text string to determine how the background fits behind it. This is affected by ascenders and descenders, which very in length by font.
Note: Ligatures are when two characters become joined, like Th and ff and only happen with certain fonts. @R Neil Haugen 
(2) Pinning (aka Responsive Design - Position) is the correct approach to allow you to center the background yourself because then you will have two separate layers... a text and a shape. For a single lien of text, make a background shape and then pin the text to it on the left and right sides. That way your editors can change the text string and the width of the shape will respond to stayed center. You can always move the y position up or down a little to keep that part centered without affecting the pinning. It;s kind of hard to explain how it all work, but if you just try it, it should be pretty intuitive.
(3) You can still make mogrts our of Pr Graphics with pinning and they should require minimal tweaks by the end users to keep them looking right.

To center and align background text accurately in Essential Graphics, you can use a shape layer with Responsive Design.

Here's how:

1. Create a new shape layer sized to match your desired background dimensions.
2. In the Properties panel, select this shape layer and scroll down to the Responsive Design section.
3. Set the Pin To option to your text layer. Then, click the center of the box next to the dropdown to pin all sides of the shape to the text layer. This will dynamically adjust the background as you add or remove text.

For more detailed instructions, you can refer to Adobe's official guide on Responsive Design features.

The solution is to use only words with letters with no descenders nor ascenders. lol. And yes, the challenge of centering text on a background is one of the reasons that small caps fonts gets used.

The solution is more complicated than it appears, and the current reality is that the "automatic" background setting does not allow enough control. But the other problem is that there is no single setting that works all the time.

Note that the best comparison of the various options is with the text box NOT showing.

And consider the background for a word with only base characters (e.g. "ounce"). It is not as tall as the background for a word with only descenders (e.g. "grape") nor only ascenders (e.g. "this"); but those two are the same size. But they do not line up!

Here was an interesting discussion of this:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-beta-discussions/offset-position-control-for-text-appearance-background-in-essential-graphics-panel/m-p/11052752#M213

@jstrawn @Kes Akalaonu Any thoughts? Is pinning something that can be used in a mogrt? In a text style?

Stan

Hey Neil, thanks for your answer!

Unfortunately, it does. At this point, I have browsed through hundreds of posts on Reddit and various other forums, and it seems that everyone has resolved this issue by using specific fonts that don't cause problems. However, in my case, that's not an option. 

I think that is the space designed to allow for "ligatures", the parts of letters like lower case p & g, that go down below the line.

If you add those, does it still look "off"?