Yes, p.continuation needs something, either a top margin or an indent, I overlooked that.
"0.5em 2em" means top/bottom and left/right. You can give one length, two lengths or four lengths.
For headers and dates, use h*. And generally try to keep semantic markup, for instance, use <div class="separator">* * *</div> for the asterisks, and then define div.separator { margin: 1em 0; text-align: center; }. Whenever you need something special, add a class to a <div>, <p> or <span>, and worry (or ask) about the formatting later.