You may be better off using CSS to add pipes. Often it’s accomplished with a background image or li:after {content: “|”}.
Wow I cannot believe I had so over-complicated that. I think I’ve been using this method for so long that I didn’t even think to see if there was another solution.
I did see this on the w3 website for future users of the ‘content’ css element:
IE8 only supports the content property if a !DOCTYPE is specified.
Thanks, jevets!