I mean "sanitize" as in "clean up" (as in "remove 'special characters'"). If you use "sanitize" to mean "encode as" (as in "replace '&' with '&'"), then there is nothing wrong with that, I would just suggest that you don't call that "sanitize", because that is highly confusing, if you look in the dictionary what that word normally means.
Assume a user uploads a TIFF file to your web application. Browsers don't understand TIFF. So, in order to display it on a web page, you convert it into a PNG. You wouldn't call that "sanitizing it for PNG" either, would you? For the same reason, you shouldn't call it "sanitizing" when you convert plain text to HTML.
Assume a user uploads a TIFF file to your web application. Browsers don't understand TIFF. So, in order to display it on a web page, you convert it into a PNG. You wouldn't call that "sanitizing it for PNG" either, would you? For the same reason, you shouldn't call it "sanitizing" when you convert plain text to HTML.