Convert HTML Bold and Italic to Markdown Emphasis

HTML Bold and Italic to Markdown

HTML uses <strong> / <b> for bold text and <em> / <i> for italic text. In Markdown, these map to double asterisks (**) and single asterisks (*) respectively.

Bold Conversion

<p>This is <strong>strongly emphasized</strong> text.</p>
<p>This is <b>bold</b> text.</p>

Converts to:

This is **strongly emphasized** text.

This is **bold** text.

Both <strong> and <b> produce the same Markdown output with ** wrappers. While semantically different in HTML (<strong> indicates importance, <b> is presentational), Markdown does not distinguish between them.

Italic Conversion

<p>This is <em>emphasized</em> text.</p>
<p>This is <i>italic</i> text.</p>

Converts to:

This is *emphasized* text.

This is *italic* text.

Combined Bold and Italic

<p>This is <strong><em>bold and italic</em></strong> text.</p>

Converts to:

This is ***bold and italic*** text.

Triple asterisks combine both emphasis levels.

Nested Emphasis

<p><em>This is italic with <strong>bold inside</strong> it</em></p>

Converts to:

*This is italic with **bold inside** it*

Edge Cases

• Empty tags: <strong></strong> should produce no output (no empty ****).
• Whitespace: <strong> text </strong> — leading/trailing spaces should be moved outside the markers: **text**.
• Inline within words: Some converters use underscores (_) for italic to avoid ambiguity when emphasis markers appear mid-word.