How to remove weird blue dots/hashtags added to text in Illustrator?

As you can see in the image, this particular file I'm working with in illustrator keeps adding these blue dots between words, hashtags at the ends of sentences, and the paragraph symbol at line breaks. They're not actually part of the text though, if I were to print this file, or export to .pdf, the dots, hashtags and paragraph symbol are not there. It's only in this particular file, and I've checked all the type/character/paragraph settings, but I can't figure it out, help please! Thanks!