^^^ +1
Clips are incredibly useful. Here is a screenshot of some of the clips I have made. These are highly customizable and I use them constantly to save on keystrokes. I have them displayed as a toolbar in place of some standard toolbars. You can also display it as a dockable window.
The <p></p> tags you were asking about can be done a couple different ways depending on if you want to keep the highlighted information when inserting the tags. I use the second method as you can see in the attachment.
Code:
<p></p> will simply insert the tags
<p>\1</p> will put the tags around whatever you have highlighted
Cheers!