The new paragraph shading feature would be fantastic to use for laying out text message conversations in books/long from documents, but needs a few tweaks to make is fully functional. Text messages in books is becoming very common and having them run in the text while paging is crucial.

It used to be that you had to create shapes and anchor each in for a text message. Now you can use Paragraph Shading defined in the style for left side texts with no adjustments, but because right side text messages need to have the "bubble" shape aligned right, but the interior text left aligned. My solution is (see sample file):
Create three base paragraph styles:
1. <left_side_text>: Defined: All text styling, paragraph shading set to Text, right/left indents, alignments, and space above/below, etc.
2. <right_side_text>: Defined: Based on <left_side_text>, but remove left/right indents
3. <right_side_text_align>: Defined: Based on <right_side_text>, but change to align flush right, add right indent (if needed), turn off paragraph shading.

Next steps:
1. Cut out all the <right_side_text> and create a standalone text frame for each text message.
2. Create (or leave) empty returns where each right side text was and apply <right_side_text_align> to the return.
3. Paste the text frames into the empty returns where appropriate to anchor frame.
4. Select each frame and apply the Object style (Text Message Right in sample file).

Could there be a way to separately control the shading alignment from the interior text alignment within the paragraph style? Much like how text functions within a div?