[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #64967: Bug report – Whitespace / non-breaking spaces removed after save in Gutenberg

[WordPress Trac]

#64967: Bug report – Whitespace / non-breaking spaces removed after save in
Gutenberg
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 Reporter:  testwp75      |      Owner:  (none)
     Type:  defect (bug)  |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal        |  Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  General       |    Version:
 Severity:  critical      |   Keywords:
  Focuses:                |
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 Hello,

 I would like to report a critical regression observed in recent WordPress
 versions (likely introduced in an update around January or February 2026),
 related to Gutenberg.

 🔴 Issue

 When editing content in Gutenberg, spaces are removed after saving,
 resulting in:

 words being concatenated
 significant readability degradation
 extremely time-consuming manual fixes for editorial teams

 The issue is not immediately deterministic, but consistently appears after
 multiple saves or autosaves.

 🔁 Steps to reproduce
 Copy text from:
 Microsoft Word
 Google Docs
 Paste into a Gutenberg paragraph block
 Edit content normally
 Save (or let autosave run multiple times)

 👉 Observed result after some time:

 spaces between certain words disappear
 text becomes “merged” without separation
 🧪 Expected behavior
 Spaces (including   / \u00A0) should be preserved
 No alteration of text content after saving
 ❌ Actual behavior
 Silent removal of certain spaces
 Incorrect conversion or loss during parsing / serialization
 Cumulative effect over multiple saves
 🧠 Technical analysis (hypotheses)

 Several factors may be interacting:

 1. Trim / DOM cleanup conflict
 Some functions treat \u00A0 as removable whitespace
 Aggressive cleanup at end of nodes or before closing tags
 2. Double normalization issue
 Browser inserts  
 Gutenberg attempts conversion to raw text (JSON serialization)
 Mapping fails → fallback to empty string ""

 👉 Result: character is lost entirely

 3. Gutenberg input rules
 Automatic transformations (typing / paste handling)
 Interaction with RichText and normalization pipeline
 4. blockGap / layout engine
 Dynamic spacing injection via blockGap
 Resolved before styles → difficult to override
 May interfere with or mask whitespace behavior
 🌍 Scope
 Observed across multiple WordPress installations
 Reproduced on:
 Chrome
 Firefox
 Independent of:
 OS
 theme

 👉 This strongly suggests a Gutenberg core issue, not environment-specific

 📉 Impact
 Critical for editorial websites
 Degradation of published content quality
 High manual correction cost
 Potential SEO impact (readability, UX)
 ❓ Questions
 Is a fix currently planned or in progress in Gutenberg?
 Is there any temporary patch or filter available?
 Is it possible to disable aggressive whitespace normalization?
 🛠️ Workarounds tested (not reliable)
 Pasting as plain text → reduces issues but does not fully solve them
 Manual proofreading → too time-consuming
 CSS fixes → ineffective (issue affects content, not rendering)
 📌 Conclusion

 This appears to be a recent regression in the Gutenberg parsing /
 serialization pipeline, likely related to improper handling of non-
 breaking spaces (\u00A0).

 The bug is difficult to isolate precisely, but clearly reproducible and
 affecting multiple production environments.

 Thank you in advance for your help 🙏
 Happy to provide additional tests or a reproducible environment if needed.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/64967>
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