diff --git a/HISTORY.md b/HISTORY.md
index 8c9d1e264..b83799e3f 100644
--- a/HISTORY.md
+++ b/HISTORY.md
@@ -3,6 +3,11 @@
 https://github.com/josdejong/jsoneditor
 
 
+## not yet published, version 9.5.6
+
+- Fix inefficient regex to replace return characters. 
+
+
 ## 2021-09-01, version 9.5.5
 
 - Fix `setMode` not throwing an exception anymore in case of a parse error
diff --git a/src/js/util.js b/src/js/util.js
index 9316e5fd0..997785543 100644
--- a/src/js/util.js
+++ b/src/js/util.js
@@ -399,8 +399,8 @@ export function getInnerText (element, buffer) {
 
   // text node
   if (element.nodeValue) {
-    // remove return characters and the whitespace surrounding return characters
-    const trimmedValue = element.nodeValue.replace(/\s*\n\s*/g, '')
+    // remove return characters and the whitespaces surrounding those return characters
+    const trimmedValue = element.nodeValue.replace(/(\b|^)\s*\n\s*(\b|$)/g, '')
     if (trimmedValue !== '') {
       return buffer.flush() + trimmedValue
     } else {