htmlText question

[Doug Lerner]

If I do something like

set the htmlText of field "chatField" to the htmlText of field "chatField" &
"<p><b>test</b></p>"

Then it adds a line of bolded text to the field.

The entire htmlText for that field then looks like

<p></p>
<p><font color="#000000">Tao: back to normal?
</font></p>
<p><b>test</b></p>
<p><font color="#000000"><b>Tao: now
</b></font></p>

Why, though, if I then

put "doug" after field "chatField"

does the new line *also* appear in bold, and all lines after that? How do I
"clear" things so that normal text appears again?

I can do 

set the htmlText of field "chatField" to ""

and that works - but it also clears the entire field.

doug