Whitespace INSIDE # tag harmful?

[FashionLux]

Hi,

I understand that 'whitespace' in source code is absolutely fine and is stripped out. For example the following code is fine:

Red Apples

some text

However, how is whitespace interpreted INSIDE html tags such as H1's? My Dev team have instructions to add H1's to a page, however they have done so like this:

Red Apples

(37 characters long)

rather than this:

Red Apples

(10 characters long)

Do you think this extra space will be harmful? The browser renders it fine, however if you use something like the mozbar plugin is shows the H1 length as 37 characters.

I know the 10 character H1 is 100% relevant to the search term "Red Apples", however is the 37 character H1 only 27% relevant? (10/37)

I've made the request to the Dev team to remove this whitespace because I'd rather err on the side of caution, but its been knocked back because the HTML spec specifies consecutive white-space should be interpreted as a  single space and all browsers build the DOM by trimming a tags value - and they imagine search bots do the same so don't want to mess with the compiler.

Anyone have experience of this? I've never had whitespace in a H1 before so don't know. Happy to leave the whitespace in if it's not going to be an issue.

Thanks in advance

[CPU]

Although its from a few years ago this video from Matt Cutts seems to suggest that there wouldn't be an issue...

watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u55Rn1mYgO8

[FashionLux]

Thanks Lewis. I think this video is commenting more about whitespace outside tags than inside them, but I think the same principle applies.

Unless I hear that it does cause issues, for now I'll leave it in and fight other battles with the dev team.

Thanks