How to remove punctuation from text
Paste text into Input text or load a .txt file with Upload. The tool removes characters in Unicode's punctuation category and leaves letters, digits, symbols, whitespace, and line breaks outside that category unchanged. Choose which marks to preserve, decide how matches are handled, then copy or download the output.
- Paste text into Input text, or use Upload to load a
.txtfile. - Select Preserve apostrophes, Preserve hyphens & dashes, or Preserve decimal points for marks that should stay.
- Enter extra marks in Also keep, then choose Remove or Replace with space.
- Leave Clean up leftover whitespace selected to collapse repeated spaces or tabs.
- Turn on Show before-and-after preview to inspect the change, then choose Copy or Download.
Remove punctuation from text while keeping selected marks
The matcher is \p{P}, the Unicode punctuation category. It includes commas, periods, quotation marks, brackets, dashes, ellipses, and other punctuation characters. Preserve apostrophes keeps straight and curly apostrophes. Preserve hyphens & dashes keeps hyphens and dash characters.
Preserve decimal points keeps a period only when it sits directly between two digits. Also keep adds each character typed into that field to the preserved set. Characters outside the punctuation category remain unchanged.
Input: Wait... isn't it, like, 3.14?
Output: Wait isn't it like 3.14With Preserve apostrophes, Preserve decimal points, Remove, and Clean up leftover whitespace selected, the apostrophe and decimal point stay. The ellipsis, comma, and question mark are removed.
Choose removal or replacement
Remove deletes each matched character, so text on either side can join. Replace with space puts a space where each match was. Clean up leftover whitespace then collapses repeated spaces or tabs and trims trailing spaces or tabs on each line.
Line breaks stay in place. Whitespace cleanup also changes repeated spaces or tabs that were already in the input. When input is present, the status line reports how many punctuation marks were removed or replaced.
Show before-and-after preview opens Before and After panels. The Before panel highlights matches that will be processed under the selected options.
What Remove Punctuation leaves unchanged
Currency symbols, math operators, emoji, digits, letters, and line breaks are outside the punctuation rule, so they remain in the result. Values such as $9.99 and 12% keep those characters while punctuation is processed.
Upload accepts .txt files. The transformation runs in the browser, and the page code makes no request that sends the entered text to a server.
Examples for preserving marks
- For a pasted draft, select Preserve apostrophes to keep contractions such as
don'tintact. - For text that should keep word boundaries, choose Replace with space when deleting punctuation could join adjacent words.
- For values such as
19.99, select Preserve decimal points. Currency symbols remain outside the punctuation match.
Choose another cleanup tool for other matches
Use Text Cleanup & Filter Tools to compare the available text transformations. Choose Remove Special Characters when you need controls for spaces, newlines, numbers, or extra characters. Choose Remove Numbers from Text when numeric content or whole number tokens are the target. Choose Remove Email Addresses for common dotted email-address-style tokens.
Frequently asked questions
How do I remove punctuation from text?
Paste the content into Input text, choose any preservation controls, and select Remove. The output updates when the text or an option changes.
Does removing punctuation delete currency symbols or emoji?
No, currency symbols, math operators, emoji, and digits remain because the matcher targets Unicode punctuation characters.
How can I keep apostrophes when removing punctuation?
Enable Preserve apostrophes before processing the text. Straight and curly apostrophes then stay in contractions and possessives.
What does Replace with space do?
Replace with space substitutes each matched punctuation character with a space. If Clean up leftover whitespace is selected, repeated spaces and tabs are collapsed afterward, while line breaks stay in place.