There are indeed many web pages in sites that will copy and paste fine. Unfortunately, the majority of the sites I use have problems that didn't exist before the iOS 5.0 upgrade. It is not just a Safari issue, as I have 5 other browser apps and the problem exists with them all when trying to copy from the same sites in which Safari users are having problems. It is probably some difference in the way the various sites' codes are being interpreted/decoded by the OS. There are many sites out there consisting of various levels of HTML coding... And this doesn't even scratch the surface of the permutations of pseudo-HTML code being generated by the many site-building software programs on the market.
There is obviously a distinct difference in the way that OS5 interprets the code vs the way that OS 3 and 4 did. Hopefully they'll fix the anomaly before too long.
Thank you for the input. Here's hoping that the apple engineers regularly read the forums and perhaps our comments will help the them narrow the search for the problem.