diff --git a/.changeset/preserve-nbsp-html-text.md b/.changeset/preserve-nbsp-html-text.md
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..88eb4a316
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.changeset/preserve-nbsp-html-text.md
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+---
+'@shopify/prettier-plugin-liquid': patch
+---
+
+Preserve non-breaking spaces (U+00A0) in HTML text nodes and stop dropping borrowed closing tag markers when a text node is pure whitespace.
diff --git a/packages/prettier-plugin-liquid/src/printer/printer-liquid-html.ts b/packages/prettier-plugin-liquid/src/printer/printer-liquid-html.ts
index 57f4f91bf..36e1e6c2e 100644
--- a/packages/prettier-plugin-liquid/src/printer/printer-liquid-html.ts
+++ b/packages/prettier-plugin-liquid/src/printer/printer-liquid-html.ts
@@ -158,7 +158,19 @@ function printTextNode(
 
   if (isYamlFrontMatter(node)) return node.value;
 
-  if (node.value.match(/^\s*$/)) return '';
+  // Only ASCII/HTML whitespace is collapsible. Do not treat U+00A0 (NBSP) or
+  // other unicode "whitespace" as collapsible, since they are meaningful
+  // characters in the rendered output.
+  const HTML_WHITESPACE_RUN = /[ \t\n\r\f]+/g;
+  const HTML_WHITESPACE_TRIM = /^[ \t\n\r\f]+|[ \t\n\r\f]+$/g;
+
+  // If the text is purely collapsible whitespace we still need to emit the
+  // open/close prefixes so that any tag markers borrowed from the parent
+  // aren't lost (see needsToBorrowParentClosingTagStartMarker).
+  if (node.value.replace(HTML_WHITESPACE_RUN, '') === '') {
+    return [printOpeningTagPrefix(node, options), printClosingTagSuffix(node, options)];
+  }
+
   const text = node.value;
 
   const paragraphs = text
@@ -166,7 +178,7 @@ function printTextNode(
     .filter(Boolean) // removes empty paragraphs (trailingWhitespace)
     .map((curr) => {
       let doc = [];
-      const words = curr.trim().split(/\s+/g);
+      const words = curr.replace(HTML_WHITESPACE_TRIM, '').split(HTML_WHITESPACE_RUN);
       let isFirst = true;
       for (let j = 0; j < words.length; j++) {
         const word = words[j];
diff --git a/packages/prettier-plugin-liquid/src/test/unit-paragraphs/fixed.liquid b/packages/prettier-plugin-liquid/src/test/unit-paragraphs/fixed.liquid
index b3be6f0ab..8cbab6278 100644
--- a/packages/prettier-plugin-liquid/src/test/unit-paragraphs/fixed.liquid
+++ b/packages/prettier-plugin-liquid/src/test/unit-paragraphs/fixed.liquid
@@ -74,3 +74,8 @@ printWidth: 20
     >Lorem Ipsum</span
   >
 </p>
+
+it should preserve non-breaking spaces (U+00A0) as text and not drop borrowed closing tags
+<p>
+  <strong><em> </em></strong>
+</p>
diff --git a/packages/prettier-plugin-liquid/src/test/unit-paragraphs/index.liquid b/packages/prettier-plugin-liquid/src/test/unit-paragraphs/index.liquid
index 840bb1171..680fc4fcf 100644
--- a/packages/prettier-plugin-liquid/src/test/unit-paragraphs/index.liquid
+++ b/packages/prettier-plugin-liquid/src/test/unit-paragraphs/index.liquid
@@ -56,3 +56,6 @@ printWidth: 20
 <p>
   {{ drop }}<span>Lorem Ipsum</span>
 </p>
+
+it should preserve non-breaking spaces (U+00A0) as text and not drop borrowed closing tags
+<p><strong><em> </em></strong></p>
\ No newline at end of file