diff --git a/apps/web/src/components/input/rich-input-whitespace.ts b/apps/web/src/components/input/rich-input-whitespace.ts
index 27fd94be8..c8490d428 100644
--- a/apps/web/src/components/input/rich-input-whitespace.ts
+++ b/apps/web/src/components/input/rich-input-whitespace.ts
@@ -53,8 +53,7 @@ const isPreservableTextBlock = (node: ProseMirrorNode) =>
 // Mark real text blocks before ProseMirror collapses their whitespace. Containers
 // that its parser turns into paragraphs need the same explicit block boundary.
 const markPastedHtml = (html: string) => {
-	const root = document.createElement("div");
-	root.innerHTML = html;
+	const root = new DOMParser().parseFromString(html, "text/html").body;
 	const blockTags = /^(P|H[1-6]|DIV|BLOCKQUOTE|UL|OL|LI|PRE|HR|TABLE)$/;
 	const normalize = (container: HTMLElement) => {
 		let paragraph: HTMLParagraphElement | undefined;
diff --git a/packages/pdf/src/templates/shared/rich-text-html.test.ts b/packages/pdf/src/templates/shared/rich-text-html.test.ts
index f5f041b8f..2f2ca3b68 100644
--- a/packages/pdf/src/templates/shared/rich-text-html.test.ts
+++ b/packages/pdf/src/templates/shared/rich-text-html.test.ts
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ describe("normalizeRichTextHtml", () => {
 	it("does not reinterpret marked RTL line breaks as pseudo-bullet lists", () => {
 		const html = '<p data-resume-whitespace="preserve">  - First<br>  - Second</p>';
 		expect(normalizeRichTextHtml(html, { direction: "rtl" })).toBe(
-			'<p data-resume-whitespace="preserve">‏  - First<br>  - Second</p>',
+			'<p data-resume-whitespace="preserve">\u200f  - First<br>  - Second</p>',
 		);
 	});
 
diff --git a/packages/pdf/src/templates/shared/rich-text-html.ts b/packages/pdf/src/templates/shared/rich-text-html.ts
index bf1a97443..c017e0b79 100644
--- a/packages/pdf/src/templates/shared/rich-text-html.ts
+++ b/packages/pdf/src/templates/shared/rich-text-html.ts
@@ -148,7 +148,7 @@ const isInlineNode = (node: Node): boolean => {
 };
 
 // Allow optional leading whitespace + LRM/RLM marks before the bullet character.
-const PSEUDO_BULLET_LEAD = /^[\s‎‏]*[-•*]\s+/;
+const PSEUDO_BULLET_LEAD = /^[\s\u200e\u200f]*[-•*]\s+/;
 
 const stripEmptyInlineWrappers = (html: string): string =>
 	html.replace(/<(strong|b|em|i|u|span)\b[^>]*>\s*<\/\1>/gi, "");