Oh dear, I am now cross-eyed after trying to read your post.
Think: paragraphs, good! No paragraphs bad!
HTML never killed anybody, and if you want to be read, use the < p> without the space before the p to make paragraph breaks. Thank you.:)
By the way, the code to produce a "less than sign" without it being operational HTML is to use
< and for the "greater than sign" is
>. That way you can show someone what to put in their post without it acting like a paragraph break. Like this: <P>.
Here's a page listing all the codes.