simple formatting problem - <pre>

[eluser]karloff[/eluser]
Ok, so i have built a simple blog, however i have used the old nl2br_except_pre($body)for formatting my body text.

However when i include the <pre> tag it obviously breaks it by not formatting text below the <pre> tag to a paragraph.

can anyone advise how best to format my text? I was think about simple coding the markup into the db field but this will break as on may pages (ie: home page) i have a snippet of a latest post which uses the word_limiter and therefore would include multiple <p> tags or not close

eg:

Code:

<p><p>snippet of text...</p>

or

Code:

<p>snippet of text...

Is there a function or some sort of workaround for this?