For this reason I stopped using emacs HTML mode in a very early stage
and switched to emacs html-helper mode. This mode a.o. combines the
automatic insertion of html tags with the ability to maintain them
manually. Also it has great support for hilit19.
It uses the 'tempo' templates packages so it is easy to extend.
Author:
<a href="http://www.reed.edu/~nelson/">Nelson Minar <nelson@reed.edu></a>
-- Johan