title: Why does jQuery compress whitespace?
body: <p>I have an AJAX call that returns a table.  Here's a row from that table:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;tr&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;1&lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;Excelsior&lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;A&lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;Erika D. Kirby (SR)&lt;br/&gt;Ariana M. Johnson (JR)&lt;br/&gt;Maddison Z. Lacey (SO)&lt;br/&gt;Jada F. Holm (SR)&lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;1:53.45&lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
      &lt;td&gt;8.00&lt;/td&gt;
  &lt;/tr&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I use jQuery to write that table into an existing div element:</p>
  
  <pre><code>function display_scores( args , response ) {
      $("#results").html( response );
  } 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Here, <code>repsonse</code> contains the table in question.  When it's rendered, the whitespace between parts of names is gone.  This is what I get from the fourth cell:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;td&gt;ErikaD.Kirby(SR)&lt;br&gt;ArianaM.Johnson(JR)&lt;br&gt;MaddisonZ.Lacey(SO)&lt;br&gt;JadaF.Holm(SR)&lt;/td&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What happened to my whitespace?</p>