Formating the_terms() function output

While you can specify separators and such in the_terms() arguments, it assumes that you actually want links.

You can discard unwanted HTML by using filter:

add_filter('the_terms', 'no_terms_links', 10, 2);

function no_terms_links($term_list, $taxonomy) {

    if ('type' == $taxonomy)
        return wp_filter_nohtml_kses($term_list);

    return $term_list;
}

Or just use deeper get_the_terms() function and iterate through its return to build your own markup.