Markdown Formatter

What This Tool Does

Markdown is forgiving, which means two documents can render identically while looking completely different in source form. That inconsistency causes noisy diffs and fails Markdown linters. This formatter rewrites your Markdown to a consistent style so it's clean, lint-friendly, and pleasant to maintain — without changing how it renders.

Formatting Rules

• Headings: ensure a single space after the hashes and a blank line before and after.
• Unordered lists: rewrite all bullets to a single chosen marker.
• Ordered lists: renumber sequentially from 1.
• Emphasis: normalize the italic marker to * or _.
• Tables: reflow and align columns via the shared table engine.
• Spacing: collapse three or more blank lines to one and trim trailing whitespace.

Configurable Options

Every rule is a toggle, so you can match your team's style guide exactly. Prefer asterisk bullets and underscore italics? Set them once. Want to leave tables alone but still fix spacing? Turn off table reflow. The live preview shows the result instantly as you adjust the options.

Code-Block Safety

Fenced code blocks are parsed and preserved byte-for-byte. The formatter never reindents your code, rewrites markers inside it, or touches its language tags — so reformatting a document is always safe, even when it's full of code samples.

Common Use Cases

• Pre-commit cleanup: normalize docs before pushing to reduce diff noise.
• Linter compliance: fix common markdownlint violations automatically.
• Imported content: tidy Markdown generated or exported by other tools.
• Team consistency: enforce one style across a documentation set.

Tips

• Run the Markdown Cleaner first to strip artifacts, then the Formatter to normalize structure.
• Match the bullet and emphasis settings to your project's lint config.
• Use the preview to confirm nothing important shifted before copying.