I looked under Assembly > GBA and didn't find that guide.  Had I looked under Hardware > GBA I would have found it.  I need to remember that with assembly, the hardware and software are very closely intertwined, unlike higher-level coding.

Anyway, I just skimmed through it, but it looks outstanding. I'll be spending some quality time with it in the coming days.

I fixed it and it was something DUMB!!!   

I had some code in atlas that I thought I had commented out, which was using <$03>, the front part of the control code, as an end tag, which was wrong, but I already knew that.

So, when it came upon <$03> in the item descriptions it was placing the pointer there, thereby starting that item description at the control code.  The strange thing is that I was using a different end code in this particular autowrite, so I'm not sure why it was using both end codes.

Anyway, thanks a lot for all of the help.  The VBA tracer actually helped me find this since I couldn't find the pointer that should have referenced the beginning of the item description.