title: How to retain spaces in DropDownList - ASP.net MVC Razor views
body: <p>I'm binding my model in the following way in the view:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;%=Html.DropDownList("SelectedItem",new SelectList(Model.MyItems,"ItemId","ItemName")) %&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Issue is my item text is a formatted text with spaces in between words, as below.</p>
  
  <pre><code>#123  First          $234.00
  #123  AnotherItem    $234.00
  #123  Second         $234.00
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I want to retain the spaces in this item text even after they are added to DropDownList. But unfortunately my DropDownList shows them without spaces as below:</p>
  
  <pre><code>#123 First $234.00
  #123 AnotherItem $234.00
  #123 Second $234.00
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When I view the source of the page those spaces are intact but in display it is not. I've tried to add '<strong><code>&amp;nbsp;</code></strong>' instead of spaces but SelectList (MVC framework class) internal method is using HtmlEncode before adding them as items in the dropdownlist.</p>
  
  <p>Is there any way I can achieve this?</p>