HTML editor: returns affecting code…

Before starting this topic, I did indeed search extensively under “hard returns”, “HTML editor”, problems, etc., but kept landing on topics where people were talking about paragraph returns in the visual editor etc. I gather this has likely been talked about already, so this is no doubt a repeat topic, but I’m “stuck in a loop” so to speak. Anyway…

I’m creating a custom theme, as well as building out the content from my old static site into WP. so, I’m working with both PHP documents edited via Coda, and creating content pages within WP. When I’m writing HTML/CSS, I like to put a return between tags to organize my code (ex: I’ll open a div tag and hit return to put the img tag on the next line to clean it up while writing code). In WP, I only use the HTML editor when I’m creating content within WP. When I write a tag, then hit return to write the next tag on the next line, it’s changing the HTML code, and it no longer renders properly. I discovered this after losing my mind completely with floating left images that kept stepping down a line from one another. I thought I was going pass out from frustration, then realized it was the HTML editor in WP adding something extra to the code.

Is it possible to disable WP’s interference with the code within the HTML editor? I just want to be able to write code to look organized as I would in Code, or whatever.

Help, and thinks.