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Frontend Utilities beginner 8 min

Preview and Fix Markdown Before Publishing

Render Markdown before publishing so broken headings, lists, and links are caught early.

Scenario

Release notes read fine as plain text, but the release page renders Markdown — and this draft has two classic landmines. -Added export is missing the space after the hyphen, so it renders as literal text instead of a list item, and [Docs](https://toolzy.dev never closes its parenthesis, so the link renders as raw brackets. Both mistakes are invisible in a text editor and glaring on the published page.

Broken input

# Release Notes
- Fixed auth
  - token refresh
-Added export
[Docs](https://toolzy.dev

Goal

Use Markdown to HTML to render the draft the way the release page will, catch what breaks, and fix the source until the preview matches the intent.

Tool sequence

  1. Open Markdown to HTML.
  2. Paste the draft and read the rendered output against what you meant: heading, a two-level list, one link.
  3. Spot the failures — -Added export renders as a paragraph glued to the list, and the Docs link shows as literal [Docs](... text.
  4. Fix the source: add the space (- Added export) and close the parenthesis ([Docs](https://toolzy.dev)).
  5. Re-render and confirm the nested list and the working link; if the platform needs raw HTML instead of Markdown, copy the converted output and tidy it with HTML Formatter.

Checkpoint output

Release Notes        ← h1
• Fixed auth
   • token refresh   ← nested list preserved
• Added export       ← now a real list item
Docs                 ← clickable link

All three bullets render as list items, the nesting survives, and the docs link is clickable instead of literal bracket text.

Common mistakes

  • Assuming plain-text readability means the Markdown is valid — the renderer is stricter than your eyes.
  • Forgetting the space after a list marker, which silently demotes the line to paragraph text.
  • Publishing links with unbalanced parentheses, especially URLs that themselves contain ).
  • Previewing in one Markdown flavor and publishing in another; nested-list and line-break rules differ between renderers.

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