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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="Maria Masala" snippet="...a Spanu]]) and describes them as &amp;quot;oppidi&amp;quot; (with Nule implied?), presumably &lt;span class=&#039;searchmatch&#039;&gt;meaning&lt;/span&gt; &amp;quot;of the town of Nule.&amp;quot;&#10;" size="1078" wordcount="143" timestamp="2017-11-22T13:43:31Z" />
    </search>
  </query>
</api>