HTML to Markdown

Stripping HTML back to Markdown

Going from HTML to Markdown is lossy by nature: HTML can express far more than Markdown can. The converter keeps what maps cleanly, headings, paragraphs, links, lists, emphasis, and drops or inlines the rest. It is most useful for turning a copied web article or a WYSIWYG export into clean, editable text.

Example

HTML input:

<h2>Notes</h2>
<p>See <a href="/x">the docs</a> for <em>details</em>.</p>

Markdown output:

## Notes

See [the docs](/x) for *details*.

What does not survive

Styling attributes, class names, inline CSS, and layout elements like <div> have no Markdown equivalent and are unwrapped or removed. Tables convert only if the converter supports the GFM table extension; otherwise they fall back to raw HTML or a mangled mess. Nested or complex markup, like a list inside a table cell, often comes out imperfect and needs a manual pass.

Whitespace is the quiet enemy

HTML collapses whitespace and uses tags for structure; Markdown cares about blank lines and indentation. Converters frequently produce stray blank lines or lose the spacing around inline elements, so the output usually benefits from a quick cleanup. Content pasted from word processors is especially noisy because of the markup they inject.

FAQ

Why is there leftover HTML in my Markdown? When an element has no Markdown form, a good converter keeps the raw HTML rather than lose the content, since Markdown permits inline HTML.

Can I round-trip without loss? No. Convert to Markdown and back with Markdown to HTML and you will get valid but simplified HTML, not the original markup.