new products in main page showing vertically

Hi.

I'm having some serious problem with the new products in the main page. normally the products display horizontally from left to right before being displayed in a new row. However, in my installation, it's displaying 3 new products downwards, leaving the right side empty. hence if I display 9 new products for say "June" I see 9 products showing in one colum downwards....

any idea where I can change the setting to fix this? I checked the admin settings - > maximum values, and have set new products module to 3. howver, i cannot find the setting to tell the system display 3 products per row before adding a new row.

I also tried doing a seach and cannot find anything regarding my issue.

Thanks for any input.

by the way, I have already set New Products Columns per Row to 3, but it's still showing 1 product per row, aligned left.