If you have no toolbar Steve, you can try typing <br><br> where you want to create a new paragraph, until your toolbar comes back.
When you have no toolbar showing, the message box becomes an HTML editor, and <br> is an HTML line break. If you use just one <br>, the text you type after it will start on a new line, if you type two <br><br>, then you will get a blank line between your text before the line breaks, and the text after the line breaks.
I think that fits nicely into the, 'How to turn something simple into mumbo jumbo', pigeonhole, lol. : )