Why is <table> not allowed inside <p>

Question

Why can't <p> be nested inside <table>? What is the correction I could make? Removing the <div> and <p> tags corrupt my design. As the website follows a client provided design.

I have the following code and it works fine in VS2008, but I get warnings:

<div class="right_articles">
    <p>
        <table>
            <tr>
                <td>
                    <img alt="Img not found" src="images/ribbon.gif" style="width: 155px; height: 125px;" />
                </td>
                <td>
                    <asp:Label ID="Label1" runat="server" Text="Label"></asp:Label><br />
                    <asp:Label ID="Label2" runat="server" Text="Label"></asp:Label><br />
                    <asp:Label ID="Label3" runat="server" Text="Label"></asp:Label>
                </td>
            </tr>
        </table> 
    </p>
    <p>&nbsp;</p>
    <p>
        <table>
            <tr>
                <td>
                    <img alt="Img not found" src="images/medal.gif" style="width: 155px; height: 125px;" />
                </td>
                <td>          
                    <asp:Label ID="Label4" runat="server" Text="Label"></asp:Label><br />
                    <asp:Label ID="Label5" runat="server" Text="Label"></asp:Label><br />
                    <asp:Label ID="Label6" runat="server" Text="Label"></asp:Label>      
                </td>
            </tr>
        </table>
    </p>
</div>

Warning 1 This end tag has no matching start tag. E:\WebSite4\test.master 121 Warning 2 Validation (XHTML 1.0 Transitional): Text is not allowed between the opening and closing tags for element html'. E:\WebSite4\test.master 5 Warning 3 Validation (XHTML 1.0 Transitional): Element 'form' is missing its closing tag. E:\WebSite4\test.master 21 Warning 4 The class or CssClass value is not defined. E:\WebSite4\test.master 33 Warning 5 File 'spacer.gif' was not found. E:\WebSite4\test.master 116 Warning 7 Validation (XHTML 1.0 Transitional): Element 'img' is missing required attribute 'alt'. E:\WebSite4\test.master 116 Warning 8 Validation (XHTML 1.0 Transitional): Element 'table' cannot be nested within element 'p'. E:\WebSite4\test.master 78 Warning 9 Validation (XHTML 1.0 Transitional): Element 'table' cannot be nested within element 'p'. E:\WebSite4\test.master 93

Answer 1

In HTML it's important to understand that P elements cannot contain other block level elements and TABLE is a block level element. The P closing tag is optional and when you try to make a P element contain something that it cannot contain, the closing P tag is assumed by the browser.

The P element represents a paragraph. It cannot contain block-level elements (including P itself).

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/text.html#h-9.3.1