I’ve figured out the issue. If you select “Allow message to be edited”, then you see these types of codes (and <p>, etc.). If I deselect that option, then it displays fine.
I can’t reproduce this and haven’t heard of or seen it before and I have looked at plenty of petitions. I suspect that when you created the petition you copied and pasted it from somewhere else. This might cause it to have some embedded HTML code.
My suggestion is to edit the petition, copy the text of your message and paste it into a text editor (Not microsoft word) that will strip any hidden formatting. Then copy it back to the petition.
Alternatively, since it isn’t very long you can type it straight into the message field from scratch.
Well, our message shows “[Your Signature]” which isn’t pretty at all. It shows only, if I DISABLE the message editing feature. If I enable it, it disappears. What’s going on here?