The following displays with each paragraph tag and the table on their own lines in IE9 exactly as I would want.
In IE9 Compatibility Mode, the last two <P> tags run up against the table as if the tale is floating.
Why? And how do I make it stop?
Edit
Just to add to this, IE 9 Compatibility mode = "IE 9 Compatibility Mode, IE 7 Standards". It displays just fine in IE 8 Standards.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN\" \"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd\">
<HTML>
<BODY>
<DIV >
<P>a</P>
<P>b</P>
<TABLE style="WIDTH: 500px; float : none;" border="1" cellSpacing="1" cellPadding="1" align="left">
<TBODY>
<TR> <TD>1</TD> <TD>2</TD> <TD>3</TD> <TD>4</TD></TR>
<TR> <TD>5</TD> <TD>6</TD> <TD>7</TD> <TD>8</TD></TR>
</TBODY>
</TABLE>
<P >c</P>
<P >d</P>
</DIV>
</BODY>
</HTML>
I've viewed the code in IE7 - IE9 as well as other browsers and it is rendering properly in all of them.
I was able to duplicate your problem if I removed float:none from the table styling.
Once I had the problem duplicated, removing align=left from your TABLE tag fixed it.
Best,
Cynthia