Byte order mark (BOM) is a unicode character that signals the byte order of a UTF text file. If displayed in a text editor it most often appears as .
Sometimes, when using Handlebars.js to produce markup you will see extraneous whitespace inserted into the DOM immediately prior to your rendered template. In the chrome developer tool, this extra whitespace appears as " ". In firebug it appears as EF BB BF.
This problem seems to occur when using the handlebars.js precompilation feature to precompile templates on the server and combine them into a single script. The precompiler doesn’t remove the BOM marks when compiling the templates so they end up in the DOM, messing with your layout.
The solution is to make sure that the template files do not include BOMs. You can use Notepad++, Sublime Text or any good text editor to save a file as UTF-8 without BOM.