Arrange for the module below to be imported, and you have an extra tag that does what you want. It removes spaces very agressively, possibly in some places that it shouldnt. Use it in dtml as: <dtml-unitws>Kill these spaces</dtml-unitws> from string import split, strip, join import DocumentTemplate.DT_Util from DocumentTemplate.DT_String import String class UnitWhitespaceTag: """ Removes redundant whitespace (not very conservatively) """ name='unitws' blockContinuations=() def __init__(self, blocks): tname, args, section = blocks[0] args = DocumentTemplate.DT_Util.parse_params(args) self.blocks = section.blocks def render(self,md): a = [] for line in split(DocumentTemplate.DT_Util.render_blocks(self.blocks, md),'\n'): line = strip(line) if line: b = [] for word in split(line,' '): b.append(strip(word)) a.append(join(b,' ')) return join(a,'\n') __call__=render String.commands['unitws']=UnitWhitespaceTag