You are looking at the HTML representation of the XML format.
HTML is good for debugging, but is unsuitable for application use.
Specify the format parameter to change the output format.
To see the non HTML representation of the XML format, set format=xml.
See the complete documentation, or API help for more information. 
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<api>
  <query>
    <search>
      <p ns="0" title="Quotes" snippet="&amp;quot;Durham Splat Space: giving &#039;in the closet&#039; a whole new &lt;span class=&#039;searchmatch&#039;&gt;meaning&lt;/span&gt;&amp;quot;&#10;" size="162" wordcount="31" timestamp="2011-01-09T20:15:33Z" />
      <p ns="0" title="March 2011 Hackerspace Challenge" snippet="...ce the word and use the web to bring up an image of the word to illustrate &lt;span class=&#039;searchmatch&#039;&gt;meaning&lt;/span&gt;&#10;" size="6598" wordcount="1021" timestamp="2011-04-08T21:00:27Z" />
      <p ns="0" title="Piano" snippet="...g., regular beats, alliteration, rhymes, repeated lines) supply rhythm and &lt;span class=&#039;searchmatch&#039;&gt;meaning&lt;/span&gt; in a story, poem, or song.&#10;*RL3.4 Determine the &lt;span class=&#039;searchmatch&#039;&gt;meaning&lt;/span&gt; of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal fro&#10;" size="8965" wordcount="1415" timestamp="2011-04-27T14:21:57Z" />
      <p ns="0" title="Challenges in elementary education" snippet="...age knowledge, and the ability to self-monitor the combination of word and &lt;span class=&#039;searchmatch&#039;&gt;meaning&lt;/span&gt;/language knowledge.  &#10;" size="6143" wordcount="962" timestamp="2011-04-04T07:38:58Z" />
    </search>
  </query>
</api>