TCPDF outdenting/negative-indent issue

For some reason, when writing content to columns with TCPDF, I am often coming across an issue where the first line in each column will be negatively indented. You can see this here (on the lines beginning "odio. Sed eleifend..." and "iaculis. Proin eget augue..."):

Oddly enough, this often doesn't occur with the first column.

I have tried minifying the html source (in order to rule out issues rendering whitespace), changing the font, changing the font-size, etc. None of which has worked.

The code itself is quite simple:

<?php

// add a new page
$this->AddPage();
  
// disable existing columns
$this->resetColumns();
  
// set columns
$this->setEqualColumns( 4, 40 );
  
// set font
$this->SetFont( 'helvetica', '', 7 );
  
// write content
$this->writeHTML( $footnotes_content, true, false, true, true, 'L' );
  
?>

source https://stackoverflow.com/questions/70250720/tcpdf-outdenting-negative-indent-issue