all p tags carry their own default margin this will cause huge gaps to appear everywhere. Simple solution is to use div tags instead of p tags, seems to work so far! If anyone knows if this is a bad idea for any reason feel free to chastise! Updated HTML below: &lt;div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;font-size:\\... Of course now the inline styling of padding and margin may be obsolete due to the div tag not carrying any as default, however im sticking with it as a failsafe. I cant believe Hotmail is still in existence, I think i'm gonna draw the line here and put the standard "if this email does not render correctly view in a browser" Its just a step too far to not use p tags for what they were designed. Its pretty safe for corporate business to business as they wont be using hotmail, but it needs some thought if its business to consumer. I completely agree, its simply archaic! Another pitfall with hotmail is their insistence of using their own 131% for line-height across EVERYTHING! (Seems as though they are not separating the styling they place on their page from the email contents making several issues crop up of this nature, how hard would it be for them to place the contents in an iframe...?) For the line-height issue; this can become a real headache when an email contains many images as small gaps start appearing under them (if theyre used in separate table cells/rows, anchor etc tags