1) Is there a way to tell the Parser that you don't want the initial DOM element wrapped in paragraph tags? (For example, if you are client-side injecting the mw-api contents into already existing content and you don't want a paragraph break there?) It seems this same question was effectively asked at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/API_talk:Parsing_wikitext and hasn't been answered yet. If the parser can't be configured in this way and I have to strip possibly undesired openings tags myself do I have any guarantees on what to expect?

2) Why do JSON results come back, for example, in the form of parse.text['*'] rather than just parse.text? With format=XML the result is just <parse><text>the stuff</text></parse>. Why the "*"? Sorry if this question is dumb.

-Zach