If you use the "greater than" or "less than" sign the forum code will go crazy and think you are trying to use HTML and mess up the rest of your post.
I think you originally wrote
since we are always < 10 ppl together....
but it showed up as
since we are always --Judge a man by the trials of his shield, not the empty reaping of his sword.
Because as soon as you used the "less than" symbol, the code started looking for the syntax and bugged out, and the next closing syntax sign ("greater than") is contained at the end of the "small" command to start your sig. E.G:
<small>--
Judge a man by the trials of his shield, not the empty reaping of his sword.