To reach the minimum edit length, instead of adding something meaningless, a better workaround is to add something meaningful, even if it's not related to the main purpose of your change. Granted, that's harder, sometimes a lot harder, but the result is better, by definition.

Another possible workaround is to leave a comment instead of editing.

I don't know of a better way to deal with it. I assume the rule was carefully tuned to the current limits to reduce meaningless edits while at the same time minimize false positives like your rare case. To dispute this rule, I suggest to post on [Meta Stack Exchange][1] instead (if it doesn't already exist).


 [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/