Comments Formatting

Hi, I’ve tried nearly all that I know (which doesn’t seem to be much as it seems others have been able to do it) but can’t fix this design feature. It seems that any in the comment by part of the comment is wrapped around a < P > automatically.
e.g: “Comment by Jenny Thursday, 13 November, 2003 @ 12:46 PM”
Here’s my current coding for it – not that there’s a space at the first < to prevent it from formatting. I’ve tried removing both the < p > and the < cite > tags but am not sure what the cite tag does:
< span class=”commentss”>< li id=”comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>”>
< div align=”justify”>< ?php comment_text() ?>< /div>
< p>< cite>< ?php comment_type(); ?> by < a href=”<?php comment_author_url() ?>” class=”vis” target=”_blank”>< ?php comment_author() ?>< /a> < ?php comment_date() ?> @ <?php comment_time() ?>< /cite>< /p>
< /li>< /span>
Any help is appreciated. Thanks.