diff --git a/Morpheus.Tests/SimHasherTests.cs b/Morpheus.Tests/SimHasherTests.cs
index cef0a3a..82844b0 100644
--- a/Morpheus.Tests/SimHasherTests.cs
+++ b/Morpheus.Tests/SimHasherTests.cs
@@ -4,6 +4,14 @@ namespace Morpheus.Tests;
 
 public class SimHasherTests
 {
+    [Theory]
+    [InlineData("a ! b", "a b")]
+    [InlineData("a \u0301 b", "a b")]
+    public void Normalize_CollapsesWhitespaceAcrossRemovedCharacters(string input, string expected)
+    {
+        Assert.Equal(expected, SimHasher.Normalize(input));
+    }
+
     [Fact]
     public void ComputeSimHash_ReturnsZeroHashForVeryShortNormalizedText()
     {
diff --git a/Utilities/Text/SimHasher.cs b/Utilities/Text/SimHasher.cs
index 424e1df..c1d303d 100644
--- a/Utilities/Text/SimHasher.cs
+++ b/Utilities/Text/SimHasher.cs
@@ -27,7 +27,6 @@ public static string Normalize(string input)
                 }
                 continue;
             }
-            lastWasSpace = false;
 
             // Strip combining marks (diacritics)
             var cat = CharUnicodeInfo.GetUnicodeCategory(ch.ToString(), 0);
@@ -42,6 +41,7 @@ public static string Normalize(string input)
             if (Rune.IsDigit(ch))
             {
                 sb.Append('0');
+                lastWasSpace = false;
                 continue;
             }
 
@@ -50,6 +50,7 @@ public static string Normalize(string input)
                 continue;
 
             sb.Append(ch.ToString());
+            lastWasSpace = false;
         }
 
         var result = sb.ToString().Trim();