why is using columns leaving an extra line at the top

Using Weaver II on WP 3.9 and the same sidebar I use for most of my pages, i created two simple pages. One with just a line of text:
https://speaker.miloshapiro.com/?page_id=670
and one using three columns and a full width at the bottom:
https://speaker.miloshapiro.com/?page_id=661

Note that I checked the Weaver option box not to display the title in both cases. So everything should be the same from the template’s point of view.

When you look at these two pages, you’ll see that the page that uses control codes leaves more blank space at the top and I don’t want that. Why is this happening and could it be prevented?

Please keep in mind with your answers that I’m learning WP bit by bit…quite the novice.
References to CSS would have to be extremely specific and guiding to be helpful.

Here is the code on that page and I promise there’s no blank line before the first “[” character. You can see I padded a little space between columns, but the problem exists even if I don’t. Thanks so much!:

[one_third padding=”0px 8px 0px 0px”]first column first column first column first column first column first column [/one_third]

[one_third padding=”0px 8px 0px 0px”]second column second column second column second column second column second column second column second column second column second column [/one_third]

[one_third_last padding=”0px 8px 0px 0px”]third column third column third column third column third column third column third column third column third column [/one_third_last]

[full_width padding=”0px 8px 0px 0px”]and here is where I should see something that is full width of the text area. and here is where I should see something that is full width of the text area. and here is where I should see something that is full width of the text area. and here is where I should see something that is full width of the text area. and here is where I should see something that is full width of the text area. [/full_width]