The HTML markup is very strange. There are a bunch of spans around various characters, words, and sequences of words, and sometimes there are non-breaking space

The HTML markup is very strange. There are a bunch of spans around various characters, words, and sequences of words, and sometimes there are non-breaking spaces in seemingly random spots. Chrome and iOS Safari both seem confused about how to render the text and how to handle "word" selection (i.e. double-clicking). My guess would be this is the output of some web-based rich text editor from the blog engine or CMS. Or it could be some sort of obfuscation system to circumvent adblockers or prevent scraping, although that doesn't make a lot of sense in this context.