diff --git a/web/react/components/post_body.jsx b/web/react/components/post_body.jsx
index 3be615bb95..8020714cdd 100644
--- a/web/react/components/post_body.jsx
+++ b/web/react/components/post_body.jsx
@@ -154,7 +154,7 @@ export default class PostBody extends React.Component {
         return (
             <div className='post-body'>
                 {comment}
-                <p
+                <div
                     key={`${post.id}_message`}
                     id={`${post.id}_message`}
                     className={postClass}
@@ -164,7 +164,7 @@ export default class PostBody extends React.Component {
                         onClick={TextFormatting.handleClick}
                         dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{__html: TextFormatting.formatText(this.state.message)}}
                     />
-                </p>
+                </div>
                 {fileAttachmentHolder}
                 {embed}
             </div>
diff --git a/web/react/package.json b/web/react/package.json
index 04e0f6babd..dd7d45f8ae 100644
--- a/web/react/package.json
+++ b/web/react/package.json
@@ -9,7 +9,8 @@
     "object-assign": "3.0.0",
     "react-zeroclipboard-mixin": "0.1.0",
     "twemoji": "1.4.1",
-    "babel-runtime": "5.8.24"
+    "babel-runtime": "5.8.24",
+    "marked": "0.3.5"
   },
   "devDependencies": {
     "browserify": "11.0.1",
diff --git a/web/react/utils/text_formatting.jsx b/web/react/utils/text_formatting.jsx
index c00193e378..62e6978a9c 100644
--- a/web/react/utils/text_formatting.jsx
+++ b/web/react/utils/text_formatting.jsx
@@ -6,6 +6,10 @@ const Constants = require('./constants.jsx');
 const UserStore = require('../stores/user_store.jsx');
 const Utils = require('./utils.jsx');
 
+const marked = require('marked');
+
+const markdownRenderer = new marked.Renderer();
+
 // Performs formatting of user posts including highlighting mentions and search terms and converting urls, hashtags, and
 // @mentions to links by taking a user's message and returning a string of formatted html. Also takes a number of options
 // as part of the second parameter:
@@ -29,6 +33,11 @@ export function formatText(text, options = {}) {
         output = highlightCurrentMentions(output, tokens);
     }
 
+    // perform markdown parsing while we have an html-free input string
+    console.log('output before marked ' + output);
+    output = marked(output, {renderer: markdownRenderer});
+    console.log('output after marked ' + output);
+
     // reinsert tokens with formatted versions of the important words and phrases
     output = replaceTokens(output, tokens);