diff --git a/src/PhpWord/Shared/Html.php b/src/PhpWord/Shared/Html.php
index 7f4bf825..2c3f5e42 100644
--- a/src/PhpWord/Shared/Html.php
+++ b/src/PhpWord/Shared/Html.php
@@ -71,11 +71,14 @@ class Html
             $html = '<body>' . $html . '</body>';
         }
 
+        //need to remove whitespaces between tags, as loadHTML seems to take those into account
+        $html = preg_replace('/(\>)\s*(\<)/m', '$1$2', $html);
+
         // Load DOM
         libxml_disable_entity_loader(true);
         $dom = new \DOMDocument();
         $dom->preserveWhiteSpace = $preserveWhiteSpace;
-        $dom->loadXML($html);
+        $dom->loadHTML($html, LIBXML_NOWARNING);
         self::$xpath = new \DOMXPath($dom);
         $node = $dom->getElementsByTagName('body');
 
