When I was rendering HTML out of cheerio (using the `$.html()` function), I was seeing large runs of newlines without this option set.  This was when I was using a different mechanism to generate the first tag (namely, replacing the contents of the HTML inside cheerio, not a good solution).  It may no longer be necessary.  Also, as for `.trim()`, it only acts on whitespace on either side of the outermost tags, and not on whitespace inside them, like this option does.  There's also a call to `.trim()` to get rid of that whitespace on line 33 (as cheerio would put a newline after its rendered HTML, regardless).

This solution is the most liberal about sanitizing whitespace in its output, but it's up to your discretion to dial it back a bit.  The tests may fail if you remove the `.trim()`, as they're expecting non-newline terminated excerpts now.