Remove Punctuation Text
Strip punctuation and symbols, leaving letters, numbers and spaces.
Remove Punctuation is a free online tool that strip punctuation and symbols, leaving letters, numbers and spaces. It runs entirely in your web browser using plain JavaScript, so files are processed on your own device and never uploaded to a server. There is no sign-up, no file size limit imposed by the site, no watermark and no paid tier.
- Price
- Free — no account, no quota, no watermark
- Category
- Text
- Where it runs
- In your browser, on your device
- Files uploaded
- None
- Technology
- plain JavaScript
- Settings
- 1
- Works offline
- Yes, after the first visit
About Remove Punctuation
Punctuation is stripped by Unicode category rather than by an ASCII list, so curly quotes, em dashes, ellipsis characters and CJK punctuation are all caught — the ones a naive `[^a-zA-Z0-9]` filter misses and that arrive constantly in text pasted from a word processor. Word spacing is preserved, so the result stays readable.
How to use it
- Paste the text you want to run through remove punctuation.
- Set keep apostrophes.
The one setting
| Setting | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Keep apostrophes | On or off. Off by default. | Off |
Under the hood
| Runs on | plain JavaScript — runs the whole thing |
| Controls | Keep apostrophes |
Questions
Does it remove hyphens inside words?
Yes — "well-known" becomes "wellknown". If you need hyphens kept, replace them with spaces first.
Why is this useful?
Normalizing text before comparison, counting or search. Punctuation is the most common reason two strings that look identical do not match, especially when one came from a word processor with smart quotes on.