Proper vertical alignment of text in tikz nodes

Question

Yuck. Presence/absence of descender characters seems to shift the baseline of my text. How do I align the text properly?

\documentclass[border=1mm]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{matrix}
\def\h{0.55cm} 
\def\w{1.5cm}
\tikzset{
  myboxshape/.style={rectangle, outer sep=0, minimum width = \w, minimum height = \h, inner sep=0},
  mybox/.style={myboxshape, very thin, draw},
}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\matrix[]
{
 \node[mybox] {Vertical}; & \node[mybox] {grungy};  \\
};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Answer 1

Quick hack: by adding an invisible character the same height as V and the same depth as gy but zero width. \vphantom{Vgy}

See: How do I create an invisible character?

\documentclass[border=1mm]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{matrix}
\def\h{0.55cm} 
\def\w{1.5cm}
\tikzset{
  myboxshape/.style={rectangle, outer sep=0, minimum width = \w, minimum height = \h, inner sep=0},
  mybox/.style={myboxshape, very thin, draw},
}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\matrix[]
{
 \node[mybox] {\vphantom{gy}Vertical}; & \node[mybox] {grungy\vphantom{V}};  \\
};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Answer 2

E.g. adding text depth=0.25ex,text height=0.8em yields

\documentclass[border=1mm]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{matrix}
\def\h{0.55cm} 
\def\w{1.5cm}
\tikzset{
  myboxshape/.style={rectangle, outer sep=0, minimum width = \w, minimum height = \h, inner sep=0},
  mybox/.style={myboxshape, very thin, draw,text depth=0.25ex,text height=0.8em},
}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\matrix
{
 \node[mybox] {Vertical}; & \node[mybox] {grungy};  \\
};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Notice that there are many ways to simplify this. They include the use of matrix of nodes, i.e. you load the matrix library but do not really use it.

\documentclass[border=1mm]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{matrix}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[myboxshape/.style={rectangle, outer sep=0, 
    minimum width = \pgfkeysvalueof{/tikz/mydims/w}, 
    minimum height =  \pgfkeysvalueof{/tikz/mydims/h}, inner sep=0},
  mybox/.style={myboxshape, very thin, draw,text depth=0.25ex,text height=0.8em},
  mydims/.cd,h/.initial=0.55cm,w/.initial=1.5cm]
\matrix[matrix of nodes, nodes={mybox}]
{
 Vertical & grungy  \\
};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

Answer 3

I would define node's style in matrix option. For desired vertical align I would in node's style define node anchor, text depth and text height:

\documentclass[tikz, border=1mm]{standalone}
\usetikzlibrary{matrix}
\def\h{5.5mm}
\def\w{15mm}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}

\matrix (m) [matrix of nodes,
             nodes={draw, very thin, inner sep=0pt,
             minimum width=\w, minimum height=\h, 
             text height=2ex, text depth=0.75ex, anchor=base}, % <---
             column sep=-0.5\pgflinewidth,
             row sep=0pt
             ]
{
Vertical    &   grungy  \\
};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}