This code is crying out for separation of logic and presentation. The idea is that you put all the presentational stuff (ie HTML, error messages, email text) and put them in another file to the code.

Look at Template for a good module for doing this.

At first it will seem like real overkill to do it this way, but it leads to much cleaner and maintainable code. It also means that it is much easier to change the presentational stuff as it is separate.

It is also much quicker to code this way. You can create an email message or HTML page to a fictional user (joe bloggs) in a normal editor, and then wher you are happy you change joe into [% person.first_name %] or whatever.

--tidiness is the memory loss of environmental mnemonics