You want to condense whitespace in an HTML text field display.
Set the object's condenseWhite property to true.
When you use HTML in a text field, the optional condenseWhite setting condenses whitespace, as is done in most HTML browsers. For example, the following text would be rendered in a web browser with only a single space between "hello" and "friend" in spite of the fact that the original source has multiple spaces between the two words:
hello friend
In ActionScript text fields, however, all of the spaces are displayed unless you set the condenseWhite property to true.
myTextField.html = true; myTextField.condenseWhite = true; myTextField.htmlText = "hello friend"; // Displays: "hello friend"
The condenseWhite property works only when the html property is true.
Recipe 8.10 and the XML.ignoreWhite property