diff --git a/ietf/utils/soup2text.py b/ietf/utils/soup2text.py
index bae2bd321..c86484077 100755
--- a/ietf/utils/soup2text.py
+++ b/ietf/utils/soup2text.py
@@ -66,6 +66,8 @@ class TextSoup(BeautifulSoup):
         return str
 
 def soup2text(html):
+    # some preprocessing to handle common pathological cases
+    html = re.sub("<br */?>[ \t\r\n]*(<br */?>)+", "<p/>", html)
     soup = TextSoup(html)
     return str(soup)