The present invention displays text within a region by identifying text boxes within the region. To identify the text boxes, the invention uses scan lines that are spaced at intervals that are smaller than the text height of the text to be placed in the boxes. These scan lines are combined to identify the full text boxes. Additionally, under the invention, a region is transformed before text boxes are generated for the region. The transform is an inverse of a text transform that is applied to the text placed in the region. This allows rotated and skewed text to be placed in the region. The invention also facilitates displaying a single text string across several disjointed regions.