Noob paragraph woes...

[Spring Heeled Jack]

I'm trying to revamp my site with some decent coding. Here's a sample page:
[a href=\"http://www.behindthechurch.com/lyrics/\" target=\"_blank\"]http://www.behindthechurch.com/lyrics/[/a]

What I want to know is, with CSS is it possible to remove the space above and below content in the <p></p>? Also, why is there space when I haven't specified a paragraph or line break?

Here's a primitive code example (bear in mind I haven't paid much attention to proper coding for a long, long time!)

[code]<IMG SRC="http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y118/behindthechurch/albums/beautifulfreak_cover.gif" BORDER=1>
<H3><B>Beautiful Freak (1996)</B></H3></CENTER>
<H1><B>
<A HREF="">Novocaine For The Soul</A> -
<A HREF="">Susan's House</A> -
<A HREF="">Rags To Rags</A></B></H1>

<HR NOSHADE SIZE=1 WIDTH=97% /><BR>[/code]

And here's the sad little proto-coding I've been working with so far:

[code]body {background-image:url('images/background.jpg')}

p {line-height: 15px}

h1 {font-size: 8pt;font-family: arial;color: #000000;font-weight: normal}
h2 {font-size: 9pt;font-family: arial;color: #000000;font-weight: normal}
h3 {font-size: 11pt;font-family: arial;color: #000000;font-weight: normal}

a:link {color: #1A98D2}
a:visited {color: 1A98D2}
a:hover {color: 1A98D2}
a:active {color: 1A98D2}

td {padding: 10px}[/code]

I'm bumbling around right now, knocking things into place in any way that makes the site reflect what I have in mind. I'd like to do it up right, so any suggestions?

[AndyB]

margin and padding take care of the spacing needs of 'blocks. Example:'

[code]<style type="text/css">
p {
margin-top:3px;
margin-bottom:6px;
}
[/code]