diff --git a/R/template.R b/R/template.R
index 77221942e3..b021f170c9 100644
--- a/R/template.R
+++ b/R/template.R
@@ -71,7 +71,7 @@ stitch = function(script,
     message('PDF output at: ', with_ext(out, 'pdf'))
   }, md = {
     out.html = with_ext(out, 'html')
-    mark_html(out, out.html)
+    markdown::mark_html(out, out.html)
     message('HTML output at: ', out.html)
   })
   out
diff --git a/R/utils-conversion.R b/R/utils-conversion.R
index 2a941ffe7f..97ea6175b9 100644
--- a/R/utils-conversion.R
+++ b/R/utils-conversion.R
@@ -168,16 +168,9 @@ knit2html = function(
   out = knit(input, text = text, envir = envir, quiet = quiet)
   if (is.null(text)) {
     output = with_ext(if (is.null(output) || is.na(output)) out else output, 'html')
-    mark_html(out, output, ...)
+    markdown::mark_html(out, output, ...)
     invisible(output)
-  } else mark_html(text = out, ...)
-}
-
-mark_html = function(...) {
-  if (packageVersion('markdown') < '1.3') stop(
-    "The 'markdown' package version >= 1.3 is required."
-  )
-  markdown::mark_html(...)
+  } else markdown::mark_html(text = out, ...)
 }
 
 #' Knit an R Markdown document and post it to WordPress
@@ -225,7 +218,7 @@ knit2wp = function(
   )
   out = knit(input, envir = envir); on.exit(unlink(out))
   content = file_string(out)
-  content = mark_html(text = content)
+  content = markdown::mark(text = content)
   shortcode = rep(shortcode, length.out = 2L)
   if (shortcode[1]) content = gsub(
     '<pre><code class="([[:alpha:]]+)">(.+?)</code></pre>',
diff --git a/R/utils-rd2html.R b/R/utils-rd2html.R
index ae16c10b6a..e57d4c3159 100644
--- a/R/utils-rd2html.R
+++ b/R/utils-rd2html.R
@@ -66,7 +66,7 @@ knit_rd = function(pkg, links = tools::findHTMLlinks(), frame = TRUE) {
   toc = sprintf('- <a href="%s" target="content">%s</a>', paste0(topics, '.html'), topics)
   toc = c(paste0('# ', pkg), '', toc, '',
           paste('Generated with [knitr](https://yihui.org/knitr) ', packageVersion('knitr')))
-  mark_html(text = toc, output = '00frame_toc.html', meta = list(
+  markdown::mark_html(text = toc, output = '00frame_toc.html', meta = list(
     title = paste('R Documentation of', pkg), css = 'R.css'
   ))
   txt = read_utf8(file.path(find.package(pkg), 'html', '00Index.html'))