Insert character at specific point but preserving tags?

Question

Update #2

Okay, more testing ensues. It looks like the code works fine when I use a faux spacer, but the regex eventually fails. Specifically, the following scenari

Answer 1

Well, I came up with a solution, rather straightforward as well.

If .text looks like this:

Line one
Line two
Line three

With the exact markup and line breaks as above, then I can find each \n and replace it with a spacer element.

if (textStr.indexOf("\n") >= 0) {
    textStr = textStr.replace(/\n/g, "\n");
}

This isn't versatile at all, and will fail if there are more than one line breaks, if the tags are different, etc. So, I encourage anyone who has a better method to answer the question! It can't be that hard, I figured it out.