Abstract: A method for compressing character-based markup language files in a web document prior to compression of the entire web document. The method first includes converting the tags and the attributes of the tags to a single case format. Then, the attributes are placed in a specified order within the tags in order to make the tags more uniform and to enable larger strings of common text to be found. Finally, any unnecessary white spaces and end-of-line characters are eliminated to decrease the size of the file. Then, the shorter of two alternative text string representations of any non-standard characters will be determined and used in order to further decrease the size of the file. The document that results from the method of the invention will compress more efficiently, yet the content is semantically identical to its original form.