Mea culpa
There's a bug in the message HTML filter. If the first character of your post is a <, it doubles it, and sometimes screws up the tag that follows.
The workaround is to put a carriage return before the angle bracket, if you really want to start your post with a tag (I often do, when I'm quoting somebody's text).
Sorry about that. I know about it, and next time I upgrade the software, I'll fix it.
Now I understand your post on Community....
--Robert