parsing information

I have a question about information displaying on the modules. I made a module that grabs the first post of a certain thread. However, when it displays the information is doesn't have a linebreak like in the forum but just one continuist sentence. When I go inside phpmyadmin, I can see the linebreak in the field "pagetext" but it doesn't display like it's suppose to. For example:

FORUM POST:
this is a test.
this is a test

this is a test

MODULE
this is a test. this is a test this is a test

anyone?

also, how do you just grab a few sentence of the post then have a READ MORE link?

Thanks