a blank line required in layout

I can't reproduce this. Which question/answer layout format are you using? "Questions inline" or "Clicking on question takes user to answer further down the page"? Do you have a screenshot of this?

Cheers,
Stella

Yes, this is happening. I sort of fixed it by changing the CSS for DT, but that affects the whole site. I was about to come in here and file a feature request to enclose the Q&A section in a DIV wrapper. I think this is needed. That would allow us more flexibility in setting up the CSS for adding this extra space, and/or, as I did, including a border specification.

.content dt {font-weight:bold; padding-top: 1.0em; border-top:2px solid #848;}

This will help too:
.more-link {margin-left: 5em;}

Which question/answer layout format are you using? "Questions inline" or "Clicking on question takes user to answer further down the page"? Is it happening for both? Do you have a screenshot of this? I've attached a screenshot of what I see on my test site.

try the attached patch.

May I suggest instead:
$back_to_top = '<p class="more-link">' . l(check_plain(t($back_to_top)), 'faq') . '</p>';

This makes CSS styling better. Using the span means that borders only cover that text, not the whole line.

Here's a more complete change with my suggestion.

Regarding the sugesstion: $back_to_top = '<p class="more-link">' . l(check_plain(t($back_to_top)), 'faq') . '</p>';

I think it would be better to add a class directly to the link (you can do that with the l() function). You can style to your hearts content and it avoid the "white space" the paragraph tag is going want to add.

The white space is easy to remove. Adding a style to the link yield the same problem as span does: borders only cover the length of that text.

Here's what I did with my suggestion:

.faq dt {font-weight:bold; padding-top: 1.0em; border-top: 2px solid #848;}
.faq_more_link {margin-left: 10em; font-size: 0.85em; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: -1.25em;}
.faq_top_link {font-size: 0.8em; margin-top:0; margin-bottom: 0;}

One "cute" thing I did with this is that the "back to top" and ">> read more" look like they are on the same line. (saved even more space)

released in 5.x-1.1