How to paste AI text into Slack, WhatsApp, Telegram and Discord

ChatGPT writes bold as **bold**. Paste that into Discord and it turns bold. Paste it into WhatsApp and you get asterisks around the words. Paste it into a LinkedIn post and you get all of the asterisks, plus ### in front of every heading.

The answer is the same in every case. What changes is the formatting rules of the app that receives it, and the rules differ more than you'd expect.

Remove the asterisks from AI textPaste your answer here

The rules side by side

"No" means the app has no typed syntax for it, so the symbols show up as they are. Tables are the common failure: no app in this list draws a Markdown table, so a pasted table arrives as rows of pipes and hyphens.

Two traps worth knowing. Slack and WhatsApp use a single asterisk for bold, so Markdown's double asterisks don't match. And in Discord, __text__ means underline, not bold as it does in Markdown.

Slack

Slack has two ways of composing a message.

The default composer has a formatting toolbar. Slack's help page describes formatting through the toolbar plus two typed shortcuts for lists: an asterisk and a space for a bullet, a number and a period for a numbered item. It doesn't describe converting pasted Markdown. In practice, pasting text that is already formatted, such as text copied from a document or web page, usually brings its bold, links and lists along as formatting.

Markup mode is a preference. Turn it on from your profile picture, then Preferences, then Advanced, and under Input options check "Format messages with markup". In this mode bold is *bold*, italic is _italic_, strikethrough is ~strike~, and backticks mark code. Slack notes three things about this mode: formatting is applied after you send, lists aren't formatted automatically, and messages you copy and paste appear as plain text.

To move an AI answer into Slack, the double asterisks need to become single ones, headings need to become bold lines (Slack messages have no headings), and tables need another shape. MDMelt's Slack option does this and puts two versions on the clipboard at once: a formatted one for the default composer and a Slack-markup one for markup mode, so whichever composer you use takes the version it understands.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp's help page lists its formatting:

• Bold: *text*
• Italic: _text_
• Strikethrough: ~text~
• Monospace: three backticks on each side
• Inline code: one backtick on each side
• Bulleted list: * or - before each line
• Numbered list: a number, a period and a space
• Quote: > before the line

WhatsApp adds a note that its new text formatting works only on the web and the Mac desktop app. It doesn't say which items are new, so lists, quotes and inline code may not render on every device.

That list explains the stray asterisks. WhatsApp's bold marker is one asterisk, and Markdown's is two, so a pasted answer comes out with extra asterisks around the bold words. Headings have no WhatsApp equivalent and keep their # signs. Tables have none either.

The fix is mechanical: replace ** with *, turn each heading into a bold line, and turn tables into something that reads well in a narrow bubble. MDMelt's WhatsApp option does all three, setting tables in a monospace block so the columns stay lined up.

Telegram

Telegram reads double asterisks, which makes it the friendliest of the messaging apps for pasted AI text. The formatting hint in Telegram X, one of Telegram's own apps, lists the shortcuts: **bold**, __italic__, ~~strikethrough~~, backticks for monospace, ||spoiler|| and [text](url) for links. You can also select text and pick a style from the formatting menu.

Headings and tables still don't exist. Telegram's developer documentation lists the styles a message can carry (bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, spoiler, code, block quotes and a few others), and none of them is a heading or a table. A ### line stays a ### line.

Discord

Discord's Markdown is the closest to what AI answers use. Its help article lists bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, headings with #, ## and ### (with a space after the pound signs), small subtext with -# , bulleted lists, code blocks, block quotes, spoilers with ||, and masked links in the [text](url) form.

Two gaps remain. A #### heading isn't on the list, and neither are tables. The usual workaround for a table is to put it inside a code block with the columns padded to line up.

LinkedIn and Unicode bold

LinkedIn's article editor has a toolbar for bold, italics, lists and quotes. Regular posts and comments don't have one, which is why people paste in bold-looking letters like 𝗯𝗼𝗹𝗱 made from special Unicode characters.

These aren't bold letters. They come from the Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols block, which exists for math notation. Unicode's technical report on mathematics says the characters "are intended for use only in mathematical or technical notation; they are not intended for use in non-technical text." There are three practical costs.

• Screen readers handle them inconsistently. In Adrian Roselli's tests from March 2025, JAWS announced each fake-bold letter one at a time with its case and style, TalkBack read the text as regular text, and NVDA, VoiceOver and Narrator didn't announce it.
• Search may miss them. The styled letters are different characters from the plain ones, so a search for the plain word won't necessarily match them.
• Only some alphabets have them. Unicode has these math forms for Latin letters, digits and Greek. Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Cyrillic text stays regular.

If you use them at all, keep it to a word or two and never the whole post. MDMelt's LinkedIn option has a switch for the bold letters with a screen-reader warning beside it, so you can post plain text instead.

Menu names and features in this guide were checked on November 15, 2026.