Rich Text Editing?

i seem to have been having problems with getting my WP posts formatted correctly (images do not center in the post even after hitting Center Justification on both the HTML and the Visual tabs) and the line spacing is frequently wonky even if i am not cutting and pasting from Word or Pages documents. for instance i cannot seem to control whether text shows up NEXT TO AN IMAGE on the right or whether it shows up UNDER AN IMAGE at the bottom – no matter what i attempt.

i was in the UI today and am trying to read up on “Rich Editing” and think i am going to try and disable this in the settings to see if this is the problem (it has been an issue for four years now and i have already posted a couple of times to the F8 static forum on this with no results that i can remember).

can anyone help me move this along a bit without closing out this post please?

i need to make my blog look professional and these are two items (controlling line spacing and text location) that are preventing me from doing this.

THANKS