How do I fill space using sprite font?

Hi I'm wondering if there is a way to make sprite font have a space "image". My font sheet is not transparent but black and I don't want gaps between the words. Perhaps this picture is telling.

I'm guessing space is just a rule in numbers for how many pixels between words rather than a peace of the sheet itself.

I thought of a ugly solution and that is to have a special character as a "blank space" instead of actual, hit key on keyboard, space. So all my text would look like "Hi$I$love$C2!" But I puke fountains in my mouth just thinking about that ugly solution.

Any suggestions are welcome!

You could just paint the $ black in your image editor and use

replace(src, find, rep)

Find all occurrences of find in src and replace them with rep.

That way your texts would look normal..

Why not have a blank square in the spritefont and add a "space" in the string in character set box on the left.

No need to find and replace anything.

[attachment=0:mpllxl4o][/attachment:mpllxl4o]

**EDIT

My spritefont has A-Z then a blank square then 0-9. My character set is ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 0123456789

I swab up the vomit and tip my hat in your direction Minor ty ty