The stripper is blunt. A star that was part of a sentence goes away with the stars that were emphasis. Read the plain line before you throw away the original.
How to use
- Paste the formatted fragment.
- Press Strip. The plain line is the words. The character count is that line.
- Reset restores the sample paragraph with a p tag and stars.
Formula / how it works
What is removed. HTML comments disappear, including the words inside them. Tags disappear, and the text between them stays, separated by spaces where the tags were. A Markdown image is dropped. A Markdown link keeps the link text and loses the address. Stars, underscores, backticks and hash marks are deleted wherever they appear, not only at the edges of words. Greater-than signs used as quotes are deleted too. Amp, lt, gt and nbsp entities become characters. Other entities stay. Runs of spaces collapse. More than two newlines become two. The sample “<p>Hello there</p>” becomes “Hello there” and the count is 11.
A heading. “# Title” followed by a blank line and Hello becomes Title, a blank line, and Hello. The hash is gone. The word Title remains. The count on that run is 12, which includes the line break. This is not a renderer. It does not know whether a star was a footnote marker. If you needed that star, it is gone.
What to keep. Copy the plain line if you want the words. Keep the original if you might have needed a mark that this page treats as formatting. The HTML formatter indents tags instead of deleting them. Use that when the tags are the point.
The stripper is deliberately blunt. It does not understand nested Markdown, and a star that was part of a sentence disappears along with the stars that were emphasis. Read the plain line before you replace an original you cannot get back. HTML comments are removed entirely, including their text, because a comment is not content you meant to keep when you asked for plain words. Entities for amp, lt, gt and nbsp are turned back into characters. Other entities are left as you typed them.
Paste a fragment, read the plain line, and only then delete the source if the plain line is what you wanted. The character count helps you notice a comment that vanished: if the count is far below the text you remember, a comment or a dropped link address is the likely cause. Restore from the box if it still holds the original. Reset replaces the box with the sample, so do not press Reset until you have copied anything you still need. The tool has no undo beyond what the browser’s own undo does in the textarea. A heading that becomes a normal line is expected. If you needed the heading level, you wanted the formatter, not this strip. The plain line is for a field that cannot store tags.
Links lose their addresses, so a sentence that only made sense with the link will look incomplete. That is the trade for a plain field. If the address mattered, copy it before you strip. The plain line will not invent it again. Keep the source until you have read the plain line twice.
Worked examples
A bold word inside a paragraph tag
Inputs: Text: <p>**Hello** there</p>
Leave the box as <p>Hello there</p> and press Strip. The plain line is Hello there.
Result: Plain:
Hello there
Characters: 11
A heading mark
Inputs: Text: # Title then Hello
Paste # Title, a blank line, and Hello, then press Strip. The hash is removed and Title remains.
Result: Plain:
Title
Hello
Characters: 12
Use cases
- Pulling words out of a copied web fragment.
- Dropping Markdown stars before a plain-text field.
- Collapsing runs of spaces.
- Seeing a character count of what remains.
Tips & limitations
- Keep the original if a star might have been meaningful.
- HTML comments lose their text too.
- This is not the HTML formatter. Tags are deleted, not indented.
- Other HTML entities besides amp, lt, gt and nbsp are left in place.
FAQ
Why did a star in the middle of a sentence disappear?
Every star is removed, not only stars used as emphasis. The tool does not guess which ones were punctuation.
Are HTML comments kept?
No. The comment, including its text, is removed.
Does a Markdown link keep the address?
No. The visible link text stays. The address in parentheses is dropped.
What is the character count?
The length of the plain result, including a remaining line break.
Will it indent tags?
No. Tags are removed. The formatter is the page that indents them.
Is the text uploaded?
No. The strip runs in the browser.
Runs entirely in your browser; your text is not uploaded. Counts and scores are heuristics, so review the output before you publish it.