Yes. Many writers have had at least some experience with HTML as a markup language. The base DITA declarations (DTD and XML Schema) incorporate a number of familiar, general HTML element names. Through specialization, these can always be extended into more specific forms. Generally, XSLT-based transformations from well-formed XHTML into DITA provides faster and more reliable migrations from HTML than copy/paste, although a skilled writer might be able to do so for small portions of content.