It appears as though \placefigure doesn't work very well with columnsets if the size of the floats isn't an exact multiple of the underlying grid. More precisely, \placefigure and friends, when used with any of the *tb and tb* options (tblr, tbrl, lrtb, rltb, fxtb) snap the bottom of the figure to the grid rather than the top. Of course, that means that most of the time figures will not be aligned at the top. (See below for an example.) Does anybody know of a fix or workaround for this problem? Reimer Behrends \showframe \showgrid \setuplayout[ backspace=0.75in,topspace=0.75in, width=7.0in,height=9.5in, header=0.0in,footer=0.35in] \setuppapersize[letter][letter] \definecolumnset[two][n=2,distance=12pt] \def\myfig#1{\placefigure[tblr]{none}{ \framed[offset=6pt,width=broad,align=right]{ \switchtobodyfont[10pt] #1 }}} \setupbodyfont[12pt] \starttext \startcolumnset[two] \myfig{\input knuth} \dorecurse{3}{\input knuth}\myfig{\input tufte} \stopcolumnset \stoptext