Formating help

I Need HELP!!! Formating my articles is killing me. When i put images in Trying to align text beside the image works fine for the first image. If i put a break in the text and have a seccond image then the text wont line up right. if i put in line breaks to line it up when i publish it it all bleeds together and looks like there are no line breaks. Also when i put in HTML with an image such as an ad i publish and it looks fine but when i go and try to edit something all the html vanishes. Even when i put it in then switch to visual view and back to html its gone. I cant figure out how to work around it. but it is making everything look like crap. If you know a solution can you please help. Ami just doing it wrong or is it an issue????