When you copy something off a webpage and then into some Word processor such as LibreOffice Writer, Microsoft Word or even the WordPress editor, the text formatting is also copied. So if the original text is displayed using the Helvetica font, with font size 22px, and using bold font style, the same formatting will be copied to the destination.
A workaround to remove the formatting is to first paste the text in Windows Notepad or Notepad++ and then copy it from there to anywhere you want. Plain text editors like Notepad++ do not accept the original formatting and therefore the text formatting is stripped.
But if you want to save your time and do not want to keep pasting the text in Notepad++ again and again, then you can use an extension called “Copy Plaintext” for Mozilla Firefox. This extension strips the text formatting when you copy something from a webpage. The clipboard then contains only the plain text and it can be pasted anywhere you want.
Copy PlainText extension does not override the usual Ctrl+C hotkey used for copying but defines its own hotkey. By default it uses F7 as the hotkey. When used under Windows, this hotkey will ask you where you want to enable caret browsing. You can either disable this warning or choose a different hotkey.
In the settings for the Copy PlainText extension, we can choose to remove the line indent (spacing before a line) which is useful when you do not want to manually remove the spaces before each of the pasted lines. We can also choose a different hotkey for copying the text without the text formatting.
All in all, “Copy PlainText” extension is very useful and removes the text formatting without any user interaction. It can save time and removes the necessity of pasting the text in a plain text editor first.
You can get the “Copy PlainText” extension for Firefox browser from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/copy-plaintext/.