Wrap those rogue text nodes (inside table-cells)!

roguetext-wrapper.js

// Wrap all "rogue" textNodes in a paragraph
(function wrapAllRogueTextNodes () {
  var allowedElements = [ 'A', 'B', 'BIG', 'I', 'SMALL', 'TT', 'ABBR', 'ACRONYM', 'CITE', 'DFN', 'EM', 'KBD', 'STRONG', 'TIME', 'BR', 'SUB', 'SUP' ];

  function arrayFrom (arrayLike) {
    return Array.prototype.slice.call(arrayLike);
  }

  function wrapInParagraph (nodes) {
    if (nodes.length > 0) {
      var p = document.createElement('p');
      nodes[0].parentNode.insertBefore(p, nodes[0]);
      nodes.forEach(function (node) {
        p.appendChild(node);
      });
      return p;
    }
  }

  function wrapAllInParagraph (arrays) {
    return arrays.map(wrapInParagraph);
  }

  function splitAtForbiddenElements (nodes) {
    var result = [];
    nodes.forEach(function (node, index) {
      if (!(node.nodeType === 3 || allowedElements.indexOf(node.nodeName) > -1) || index === 0) {
        result.push([]);
      }
      if (node.nodeType === 3 || allowedElements.indexOf(node.nodeName) > -1) {
        result[result.length - 1].push(node);
      }
    });
    return result;
  }

  function childNodesAsArray (node) {
    return arrayFrom(node.childNodes);
  }

  function hasTextNodes (node) {
    return (node.nodeType === 3 && node.textContent.trim() !== '');
  }

  function filterNoText (nodes) {
    return nodes.some(hasTextNodes);
  }

  function filterComments (node) {
    return node.nodeType !== 8;
  }

  function filterBlankText (node) {
    return !(node.nodeType === 3 && node.textContent.trim() === '')
  }

  function noCommentsOrBlankText (nodes) {
    return nodes
      .filter(filterComments)
      .filter(filterBlankText);
  }

  var nodes = arrayFrom(document.querySelectorAll('td'));

  nodes
    .map(childNodesAsArray)
    .filter(filterNoText)
    .map(noCommentsOrBlankText)
    .map(splitAtForbiddenElements)
    .map(wrapAllInParagraph);
}());