How do screen readers treat empty paragraphs please?

I am trying to educate someone for whom I designed accessible web templates
to produce clean and tidy code.  However, he wishes to use multiple empty
paragraphs with non-breaking spaces to mess up my nice style sheets with
uneven spacing. My question is sort of related: if a screen reader comes
across code like this:

<.p>&nbsp;</p>
<.p>&nbsp;</p>
        <.p>&nbsp;</p>
        <.p><.br>
          <.br>
        </p>
        <.p>&nbsp; </p>

(horrible, isn't it?) -- will this cause annoyance to the reader, or just be
ignored completely? If the latter, I shall have to bite my tongue and keep
quiet, I guess.

Lois Wakeman
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http://lois.co.uk
http://siteusability.com
http://communicationarts.co.uk
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Received on Friday, 22 November 2002 07:09:31 UTC