Remove Punctuation
Strip commas, full stops, quotes, brackets and other punctuation, in any language, ready for analysis or comparison.
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How the Remove Punctuation works
Punctuation is identified by the Unicode general category, so it works well beyond ASCII: Chinese 。，！, Spanish ¿¡, Arabic ؟ ، and curly quotes are all removed. Symbols such as $ + = < > ^ ~ are a different category and are left in place unless you tick “Also remove symbols”.
“Keep apostrophes and hyphens inside words” leaves don’t, o’clock and well-known intact, but still removes quotes and dashes at the edges of a word and stand-alone dashes. Turn it off to remove every apostrophe and hyphen.
Removing punctuation can join words that were separated only by it: “a,b” becomes “ab”. Spaces are never added, so run the text through a space-aware step first if that matters.
How to use it
- Paste your text.
- Keep apostrophes and hyphens inside words if you will still read the text.
- Copy the result.
Example
Inner apostrophes and hyphens stay; quotes, dashes and other marks go.
Input
“Well-known” isn’t unusual, is it? Yes, really! (Or: not.)
Result
Well-known isn’t unusual is it Yes really Or not
Frequently asked questions
Why are some characters like $ or + still there?
They are symbols, not punctuation. Tick “Also remove symbols” to delete them. Note that this category also contains some pictographs, so use Remove Emojis if emoji are your target.
Is the em dash removed?
Yes. Em and en dashes are punctuation. A dash between two letters without spaces, as in “yes—really”, is removed and the two words join; a hyphen between letters is kept when the inner-marks option is on.
Does it work for non-English text?
Yes. It uses Unicode categories, so punctuation from Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hindi, Greek and other languages is recognised.