HTML characters in links

is   and other HTML chars ok?

[aleksl]

Very simple question.

We use software that on some pages produces links padded with several " " ("HTML space") characters. i.e. between anchor tags you will have " Link text". Does this kill our link weight for KW "Link text", or it doesn't matter?

Would any other HTML formatting characters matter as far as linking is concerned?

[minnapple]

get rid of the non breaking spaces or other similiar characters