Short answer: those symbols are Markdown, a shorthand for formatting. **word** means bold, ## Title means a heading, - item means a bullet. Apps that don't understand Markdown show the raw symbols. Paste your text below to turn it into clean plain text: headings stay as lines, bullets become •, links keep their address, and tables become tab-separated so they paste into a spreadsheet.
| You see | Markdown meaning | Plain-text result |
|---|---|---|
**Decision:** or __Decision:__ | Bold | Decision: |
*Friday* | Italic | Friday |
### Meeting notes | Heading | Meeting notes |
- Update the page or * Update the page | Bullet list | • Update the page |
- [ ] Send invoice | Checklist item | ☐ Send invoice |
[status page](https://example.com) | Link | status page (https://example.com) |
`customers@` | Inline code | customers@ |
| Task | Owner | rows | Table | Task⇥Owner (tab-separated) |
> quoted line | Quote | quoted line |
--- on its own line | Divider | (removed) |
Things that only look like Markdown are left alone: 2*3*4, snake_case_names and a lone asterisk for a footnote stay as written.
Chat assistants write their answers in Markdown, and the chat window renders it as nice formatting. Whether the symbols survive when you copy depends on how you copy: the copy button usually hands over raw Markdown, while selecting and copying the rendered text usually carries the formatting. Paste the raw version into an app that doesn't speak Markdown, such as most email clients, Word, LinkedIn, text messages or a web form, and you see the asterisks and hashes.
** with nothing. Fine for bold, but it misses headings, links and tables, and a stray single asterisk can wreck the rest.If you'd like real bold text and bullets in Word or Gmail rather than plain text, a Markdown-to-rich-text route is better: recent versions of Google Docs can convert Markdown (look for the Markdown options under Tools › Preferences and in the Edit menu), and many note apps paste Markdown as formatting. TidySnap aims for the most portable result: clean plain text that pastes the same everywhere.