Martha, in upper right, there should be an icon on the mail toolbar. Clicking it should open the menu. If the Mac has an F10 key, that should work also. Assuming that works, it's all downhill from there. Click Settings>general for fonts and then settings>composition to untick the paragraph vs spaces setting.

Thank you, David. It did not solve my problem because I don't have those options in my menu. F10 did nothing but mute my sound. But I did use the 3 lines on the upper right hand of the page to get into my account settings that way and unchecked the paragraph setting (see below) and now it stays in text form and does not skip the space anymore when I use the return key.

While in the settings area, I went to "composition and addressing", chose "global composing preferences" and it was there I was able to uncheck the paragraph setting and set my fonts and size.

The photo shows how I got into my account settings.

Thanks, Martha

Thank you for confirmation. That was the icon in upper right I was referring to. Setting fonts exactly as desired is not always straightforward. If you discover inconsistencies, write back. HTML messages are usually pretty consistent, but plain text messages are not. Anyway, I'm glad all seems okay. And... I see you use a dark theme. If you also want the message content dark, there is an excellent addon called 'dark reader.' Highly recommended by me.

Thanks. I installed dark reader but have no idea how to use it. Oh well....

Martha

Assuming you activated it, look in upper right of main screen and there should be a dropdown menu for settings. There might also be an image of a wrench in tools>addons on the line where Dark Reader is defined.

Found it and it is now activated!!!! Thanks again, David.

Martha

You're very welcome.