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-continue>
    <allcategories accontinue="Series_Processing" />
  </query-continue>
  <query>
    <allcategories>
      <c size="9" pages="9" files="0" subcats="0" xml:space="preserve">Authority Control</c>
      <c size="2" pages="2" files="0" subcats="0" xml:space="preserve">Authority Control Processing</c>
      <c size="1" pages="1" files="0" subcats="0" xml:space="preserve">Authority Providers</c>
      <c size="16" pages="16" files="0" subcats="0" xml:space="preserve">Dedupe Profile Guide</c>
      <c size="1" pages="1" files="0" subcats="0" xml:space="preserve">General AC</c>
      <c size="27" pages="27" files="0" subcats="0" xml:space="preserve">General Information</c>
      <c size="0" pages="0" files="0" subcats="0" xml:space="preserve">Pages with broken file links</c>
      <c size="147" pages="147" files="0" subcats="0" xml:space="preserve">Profile Guide</c>
      <c size="1" pages="1" files="0" subcats="0" xml:space="preserve">RDA</c>
      <c size="44" pages="43" files="0" subcats="1" xml:space="preserve">RDA Profile Guide</c>
    </allcategories>
  </query>
</api>