text box problems, help please! Options

[Serendipity]

i have two paragraphs of text i want to put in text boxes (one with a photo). somehow the code isn't working right. i'm using this code:

<!-- begin code provided by createblog.com --><br /><div style="background:transparent;border:5px solid:ff9900;font-family:arial;font-size:11px;color:330000;width:450px;height:225px;overflow:auto"><br /><!-- end code provided by createblog.com -->

here's the problem. i use the code for one of the paragraphs of text (and put </div>) at the end, and it works. but if i try it for my other paragraph, it doesn't work. Sometimes if I don't put </div> at the end, it will work, but most of the time it doesn't. Is this something common and is there a way to fix this??