diff --git a/src/node/utils/ExportTxt.js b/src/node/utils/ExportTxt.js
index 05847f162..c57424f1d 100644
--- a/src/node/utils/ExportTxt.js
+++ b/src/node/utils/ExportTxt.js
@@ -26,7 +26,6 @@ var Security = require('ep_etherpad-lite/static/js/security');
 var hooks = require('ep_etherpad-lite/static/js/pluginfw/hooks');
 var getPadPlainText = require('./ExportHelper').getPadPlainText;
 var _analyzeLine = require('./ExportHelper')._analyzeLine;
-var _encodeWhitespace = require('./ExportHelper')._encodeWhitespace;
 
 // This is slightly different than the HTML method as it passes the output to getTXTFromAText
 function getPadTXT(pad, revNum, callback)
@@ -225,7 +224,7 @@ function getTXTFromAtext(pad, atext, authorColors)
         // plugins from being able to display * at the beginning of a line
         // s = s.replace("*", ""); // Then remove it
 
-        assem.append(_encodeWhitespace(s));
+        assem.append(s);
       } // end iteration over spans in line
       
       var tags2close = [];
@@ -292,9 +291,3 @@ exports.getPadTXTDocument = function (padId, revNum, noDocType, callback)
   });
 }
 
-function _encodeWhitespace(s) {
-  return s.replace(/[^\x21-\x7E\s\t\n\r]/g, function(c)
-  {
-    return "&#" +c.charCodeAt(0) + ";"
-  });
-}