Help with Menus-new to dropdowns

One thing to try would be closing the image tag...

<img src='/path/to/image.gif' />

Another thing to try might be to do something with CSS...

<li class='spacer_line'><span></span></li>

then in your CSS:

li.spacer_line {
    height:5px;
    background-image:url("/path/to/image.gif");
    background-repeat:no-repeat;
}