It sounds like you need to upgrade e-Sword to a newer version, the characters you are seeing are html codes for things such as italics which are <i></I>.
e-Sword for Windows became html compatible starting with the release of e-Sword 11
All official e-Sword resources such as the NBLA modules are formatted in html so they can be used with newest versions of e-Sword for Windows, Android, Apple and MAC.