Convert plain text to HTML tagged text

To the list: I've googled and searched the manual, but I'm still looking for a simple solution to a simple problem. I have a MySQL database of text stories in longtext MySQL fields. These stories have simple returns (\r) in them and no other formatting. I need to use these stories both for web and print production, so I need to be able to get the text out of MySQL via PHP and have those returns change to <P> tags. But I also need to keep those extra <P> tags out of the database file so the text can be exported and poured into a layout program. HTMLspecialchars and HTMLentities don't seem like the right solution, but maybe I'm missing something. Do I have to use regular expressions in PHP as the text is pulled from the database? Thanks in advance for your help. --veditio