Quick Action Email HTML body not showing line breaks/BR() not working

I've created text to go into predefined field values of HTML Body in a Send Email Quick Action along the lines of "Thank you for your email."&BR()&BR()&$User.FirstName&BR()&$User.Title.

so it should look like:

Thank you for your email.

John

Manager

Instead it looks like:

Thank you for your email.JohnManager

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?  Thanks