When Gnus decodes an email message with Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; DelSp="Yes"; format="flowed" it does not remove the extra space inserted before newlines. Example encoded text (wrapped at column 70, two spaces after "big" and before the newline): The moon in June is like a big balloon, the moon in June, a big balloon. Decoded text (using a large value for fill-flowed-display-column, so no line breaks, still two spaces after "big" and before "balloon"): The moon in June is like a big balloon, the moon in June, a big balloon. Gnus v5.13 GNU Emacs 25.2.1 (amd64-portbld-freebsd11.0, X toolkit) of 2017-04-30 ^ I also tried this with a recent build from the master branch and got the same result.