Extra line returns/whitespace around em and a tags?

I’m not exactly sure what’s happening here (and alas this is on my laptop so I can’t link you the site), but I noticed that em and a tags are getting line returns tacked on before and after them.

                            <p>
                                📜 You might or might not know me from such projects as Stop S314, The Millennium Cafe, 
                                <em>Portland Communique</em>
                                , Can’t Stop the Serenity, or The Belmont Goats.
                            </p>

This then somehow is rendering in-browser as extra white space before and after the tags, resulting in, for this example, a space between the end of Communique and the comma after it.

Any ideas?