Script messing with comment count

Specifically: //xxx.disqus.com/count.js

I’m using non-standard HTML to display the comment count, as so:

comments_number(
  '<em>0</em> <span><a href="#disqus_thread">comments</a></span>',
  '<em>1</em> <span><a href="#disqus_thread">comment</a></span>',
  '<em>%</em> <span><a href="#disqus_thread">comments</a></span>'
);

This will format the HTML as so:

<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="123 http://site.com/?p=123">
  <em>0</em> <span><a href="#disqus_thread">comments</a></span>
</span>

But when count.js runs, it changes this to:

<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="123 http://site.com/?p=123">
  <em>0</em> <span><a href="#disqus_thread">0 Comments</a></span>
</span>

Notice it’s changed the text inside the <a> element, so now the number of comments is duplicated and the word itself is capitalised.