title: What is this INSANE space character??? (google chrome)
body: <p>This is driving me absolutely, !&amp;&amp;%&amp;$ insane... it defies everything that I can think of.</p>
  
  <p>THIS character right here... <code>" "</code></p>
  
  <p>In between these quotes... open google chrome and inspect. You will see its a <code>&amp;nbsp;</code>... normal right? Now right click and actually view the source of this stack overflow page. It's a regular space... (also, the character I copied was an actual space).</p>
  
  <p>I could understand if it's some kind of rich text editor or something, but in the raw html source is a regular space, so what gives?</p>
  
  <p>Here's just with hitting the space key (which works fine)... <code>" "</code>.</p>
  
  <p>You can even copy it and paste it everywhere and wreak havoc and make chrome put <code>&amp;nbsp;</code> everywhere. Even though whats copied in your clipboard is just a SPACE.</p>
  
  <p>I have these stupid characters show up everywhere randomly in my website and I have no idea where they come from, or WHY is google converting a SPACE into a nbsp;</p>
  
  <p>I have tried inspecting the actual character code and it's a regular space from all things I can find...</p>
  
  <p>Every single method I try shows it as a NORMAL space... so what gives?</p>
  
  <p>If i use ruby and do <code>" ".ord</code> I get <code>32</code>. If i do it with the broken space I also get <code>32</code>.</p>
  
  <p>Please help me im losing my mind.</p>
  
  <p><strong>edit</strong>: you can prove this... view source on this page and you will see two empty <code>" "</code> like normal. Now look in console and only the one will be a <code>&amp;nbsp;</code>, yet the raw source is identical.</p>
  
  <p>Image for people not using chrome (this is looking at this very post via chrome dev tools): <img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/iJGgQ.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>
  
  <p>Here's the HTML of the same text you see when you view source... no nbsp to be found.</p>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZyTXO.png" alt="enter image description here"></p>