Okay I figured out a patch of sorts for part of it:
I added this CSS:
p, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
overflow-wrap: normal;
word-wrap: normal;
-webkit-hyphens: manual;
-ms-hyphens: manual;
-moz-hyphens: manual;
hyphens: manual;
}
It solves my em-dashes problem, and on phones I no longer have that stream of text to the left and right of my pullquotes. Unfortunately even messing with media queries for hours I wasn’t ever able to figure out how to make rt and lft aligned pullquotes centered/ fullwidth on small screens, so they do look a little weirdly off center. Also, when i test it by reducing the width the web browser, I do get stray words floating on one side or the other. It’s ugly but at least it’s better than the incomprehensible text i was getting before.
I haven’t figured out how to make images full width inside a post either (like when you get a cool image that extends past the borders of the page and breaks things up in online articles). WordPress calls them cover images even though they’re inside your post, but I guess they can only go full width on certain themes.