EDIT (added): Successfully connected with a usb to serial cable for the first time and can send commands, but information I get back in the terminal has extra characters. I tried adding +t to username, but this does not resolve. Any suggestions?
(I was wrong about not being able to send commands... too tired at the time and had command wrong, lol)
END Edit


Successfully connected with a usb to serial cable for the first time and can send simple commands without extra spaces (e.g. "/ip export" works, "ip bridge add..." does not. Plus I get information back, but it has extra characters... problems with spaces in my ttl setup? Suggestions?

connecting, login OK receive a lot of extra stuff same using another program

Why do you believe that the bridge is in ip?

Read the manual:
https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:Interface/Bridge

@jarda, you are correct of course and I can send commands, so I am mostly happy, but I still get back some extra characters.

see here for example the extra characters added. Not so bad in this example, but the export output for example is much harder to read. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? These always start right after the initial login screen See the following...

this looks like color codes for vt100 or something ... try a different terminal emulator?

Those are ANSI escape sequences. You need to use a terminal that supports ANSI.
Looks like you may be using Linux, you can use also use the screen command from a terminal window.