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="Community Service" snippet="...gramme not only teaches but also encourages our students to carry out well &lt;span class=&#039;searchmatch&#039;&gt;meaning&lt;/span&gt; activities that will initially benefit others more than themselves. The pro&#10;" size="4672" wordcount="668" timestamp="2014-10-30T22:10:31Z" />
    </search>
  </query>
</api>