If RTE (Rich Text Editor) is turned off, then you will only see the source code. The issue with RTE is that it ends up adding in stuff you cannot see without looking at the source, which can mess up the on page script stuff.
If I recall, you can have the RTE on and then press some button to view the source code, which may help in seeing if all the things around the %'s are clear/appropriate.
ASCII is a way that computers represent stuff, and because html (the thing web-pages are made with) uses certain characters in it's 'coding', such as < and > you cannot type them out yourself (in some conditions) without it getting read as html by the browser, which means they won't show up as you want. However, you can type out something else instead which will let the browser know to interpret it as the symbols without thinking of them as part of the html (& l t ; for less than, without the spaces, & g t ; for greater than).
As I recall, some things the RTE puts in are literally just invisible ASCII, things no one will see but that can mess with on page scripting if they end up being in certain spots, which makes the storygame code get interpreted wrong (or I should say not at all).
A span is something used in html to separate stuff, it is super generic and probably something the RTE put in by itself for whatever reason. Not necessary at all as far as I'm aware (for making a storygame).
Worth mentioning that one of the reasons RTE is so often suggested to be turned off is because the functionality it provides is easy enough to just do yourself by typing the html into the source, as the basic things are simple enough to learn, <p> </p> for paragraphs, <b> for bold </b> (or use strong instead of the b), i or em for italics, <br> for a paragraph break (like shift-enter in word), etc. As such, there ends up being very little reason to use the RTE, but it does make global font changing (and color changing) a bit easier, but they can still be done without it (and global scripts are a thing).
Anyway, the more complex html stuff can also be implemented (as far as I'm aware) and is in fact easier to deal with without the RTE messing you up constantly.
TL;DR
Just me attempting to explain some things that came up in this thread, because I felt people weren't explaining it as much as they could. Granted, I might have gotten something wrong, in which case I await people to correct me.
Also, with RTE turned off, the only thing you'll see is the source code (which probably shows that what you were copying pasting wasn't clean [or became corrupt after pasting into RTE]).
P.S. Right click a page then 'inspect' or 'view page source' to get a glimpse into web creation with html + css. It will probably be messy... but might be interesting to take a glance at (you might even find a span or hundred).
