The copy and paste routine copies the green background color with the text now. Has higher headquarters instituted a theft deterrent policy?

What are you trying to paste into? I just tried pasting your post into Word and had no issue.

It's likely on the browser end. Do you have a "paste as plain text" option? If you don't, you could paste to a text editor like Microsoft Notepad and then copy back out. There is no formatting in notepad (just plain text).

You could also paste into somewhere like the address bar that has no formatting and then copy back out if on a cell phone that doesn't allow you to paste as plain text.

I thought I have always been able to either copy cleanly into Pages or Mail on my IPad. I’ll try the address bar idea. Thanks for the suggestions.

Copying and pasting the text into the “subject line” also works.

Hit the quote button and copy it from there. That's plain text.

Move the tear drops on the text wanted do not choose select all.

Format painter. Fixes everything.