[Support request] Span tags keep getting inserted automatically

[dale]

I’m not sure if this is a conflict plug-in or what, but I’ve seen other people discussing this in WordPress forums, so I thought I would mention it here to see if there is a possible solution. Over the past few months, the word press WYSIWIG editor has been randomly adding <span> tags into my text. They usually making the text editor version look something like this:

Over the past few months, the word press <span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;">
WYSIWIG editor</span> has been randomly adding <span> tags into my text. They <span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;"> usually look something</span> like this.

Sometimes the styles get added to other tags instead, for example changing:

I read a play called <em>Romeo & Juliet</em>

to

I read a play called <em style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;">Romeo & Juliet</em>

Any idea what’s going on here, and if there is an easy way to prevent this from happening or clean it up without having to go in and manually delete all the tags?

In the wordpress forums, code like

add_action( 'after_setup_theme', 'editor_setup', 11 );
function editor_setup() {
 global $editor_styles;
 $editor_styles = array();
}

has been suggested as an addition to function.php, but I’m wary of adding this is I don’t understand what’s causing it in the first place.

[Tom]

Stuff like this is usually caused by a plugin. Do you have any editor related plugins installed?

[dale]

Sorry to drop this. I have lots of plugins installed but not sure which ones would be editor related. So you mean ones that appear in the tools menu of the editing pane in posts or pages? Of those, I have:

Gallery/Photo Gallery by Supsystic
Add contact form (from Jetpack)
Proofread Writing (from Jetpack)
WP Show Posts
Better Click to Tweet (This problem started before I installed it)
Social automations by Nelio Content

I also have plugins that affect post status like LH Archived Posts and Event Post by NOUS.

[Tom]

Have you tried deactivating everything to see if the problem still exists?

[dale]

Not yet. It’s annoying, but it happens so randomly (e.g. not every day), it might be more hassle to have the plugins turned off than to just keep putting up with it.

[Author]

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