Ok, so I haven't used the visual editor in so long that I don't even remember what it looks like... So we know that's not the issue.
I ONLY use the HTML editor and I write my own <p> tags and <br /> and so forth... The problem I'm running into now after upgrading to 2.8 is that each time I use a special <span> with custom styling that I've made, WP is adding a <p> around that span as well as a <br /> after the paragraph.
I'm also noticing that there are extra <br /> being added beneath images that I insert into the post...
It's completely screwing up the look of the post and it's beginning to piss me off.