I am useing this code
<p style="background:black;color:white;font-family:Times New Roman, Arial;font-size:20px">

One thing do I need " " marks anywere??????

And two how do I ad the width and height to controle how big I want the black box around my text??

I think this is what you want

<p style="background:#000; color:#FFF; font-family:'Times New Roman, Arial; font-size:20px;">

I think it will work as you did.but when you end it dnt forget end tag .