First, Book View is the left of the 3 icons on the tool bar (a book which is Book View, a book with <> on it, which is Preview, and just <> which is code view). The Red text only appears in Preview. Are you sure you are switching to Book View and not Preview View.
Second, can you be more precise about what text you are adding by clip and where. e.g. are you just adding a "<p>" - and if so I assume manually typing "<p>" has the same effect (just to eliminate clip from this discussion).
In other words can you list your exact text before you do a ctrl ., and tell us where you click before you press ctrl ., and what the text is after you press it, and what happens when you switch to Book View after.
The </p> should only have been added where you pointed if there was an open p before it. But in your text the previous open tag is <!-- and so I get </!--> when I do ctrl . (which is wrong, but not the issue you stated). Hopefully we can find the issue.