I may have answered my own question as I seem to be able to control when a class is added to the span or ul tags. This seems to happen after two full carriage returns or a full <p> </p> between paragraphs. I can stop this from happening by using a shift+return to get a </br> tag.
If there is an easier way to control this please let me know. If not I can work around this.
Cheers!