Exactly. Instead of just resorting to tables, I'd be much more likely to resort to a couple of DIVs which would involve less markup and be less semantically inc

Exactly. Instead of just resorting to tables, I'd be much more likely to resort to a couple of DIVs which would involve less markup and be less semantically incorrect. But the whole point is that I don't want to have to decide, on an article-by-article basis, exactly where my break between two columns should actually be.