Greetings! I'm converting Hebrew text, word by word, into code points, which is returned as: 1493 1463 1497 1468 1463 1513 1473 1456 1499 1468 1461 1448 1501 1500 1464 1489 1464 1436 1503 .... (the file is quite long) What I expect is described at: https://www.w3.org/TR/xslt-xquery-serialization/#sequence-normalization "If the |item-separator| serialization parameter is absent, then for each subsequence of adjacent strings in /S_2 /, copy a single string to the new sequence equal to the values of the strings in the subsequence concatenated in order, each separated by a single space." I maybe very wrong but shouldn't that render the strings as?: 1493 1463 1497 1468 1463 1513 1473 1456 1499 1468 1461 1448 1501 and, 1500 1464 1489 1464 1436 1503 I've tried using replace($a, "\n", " ") but it complains that $a is a sequence, which it is. Then I tried: for $char in $a return ($char, " ") Now I get: 1493 1463 1497 etc. I saw the new line settings under serialization but there didn't appear to be any way to defeat them altogether. Thanks! Patrick -- Patrick Durusau patrick@durusau.net Technical Advisory Board, OASIS (TAB) Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300 Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps) Another Word For It (blog): http://tm.durusau.net Homepage: http://www.durusau.net Twitter: patrickDurusau