Remove Special Characters
Strip symbols, punctuation and emoji from text while keeping letters from every language, digits and spaces.
Your text stays in this browser tab. Nothing is uploaded, saved or logged.
How the Remove Special Characters works
A character is kept if it is a letter in any script, a combining accent, a digit or whitespace. Everything else is removed: punctuation, symbols such as @ # $ % & *, currency signs, arrows and emoji. Accented and non-Latin letters (é, ñ, Ж, 東) are never treated as special.
“Keep basic punctuation” preserves . , ! ? ; : ' " - ( ) and curly quotes, which is handy when you want readable sentences. “Also keep these characters” lets you add your own, for example @ and _ for usernames. Line breaks are kept unless you turn that off.
You can replace each removed run with something, such as a space or underscore. A run is a group of adjacent removed characters, so “a!!!b” with an underscore becomes “a_b”, not “a___b”. Emoji made of several parts, like a family or a flag, are removed as a whole.
How to use it
- Paste your text.
- Decide whether to keep basic punctuation, line breaks or extra characters.
- Copy the cleaned text.
Example
Symbols and emoji go; accented and Japanese letters stay.
Input
Héllo, wörld! Price: $5 (50% off) #deal @home 😀 東京
Result
Héllo wörld Price 5 50 off deal home 東京
Frequently asked questions
Will it remove accents like é or ñ?
No. Those are letters. To convert them to plain e and n, use Remove Accents.
How do I keep the @ in email addresses?
Type @ in “Also keep these characters”. Add the dot too, or turn on basic punctuation, if you want to keep the dot.
What is the difference from Remove Punctuation?
Remove Punctuation deletes only punctuation marks and leaves symbols like $ and + in place. This tool removes everything that is not a letter, digit or space.