Remove Punctuation

Strip punctuation from text in one click — commas, full stops, quotes, brackets, dashes and the rest — while keeping the words themselves intact. Options let you keep apostrophes and hyphens. A free, private punctuation remover.

This tool removes punctuation from any text, leaving just the words and spaces. It strips commas, full stops, question marks, quotes, brackets, colons and every other punctuation mark in one pass, using the full Unicode definition of punctuation rather than a short hand-picked list. Because contractions and compound words often matter, you can choose to keep apostrophes (so "don't" stays whole) and hyphens (so "well-known" survives). Everything runs on your device, so even long text is stripped instantly.

  • No sign-up, ever
  • 100% free
  • Nothing uploaded
  • Works offline after first load
  • No limits, no email wall
Your text
Without punctuation

How to use it

  1. 1

    Paste your text

    Add the sentence, paragraph or list you want stripped of punctuation.

  2. 2

    Decide what to keep

    Leave apostrophes on to protect contractions, and hyphens on to protect compound words.

  3. 3

    Copy the plain words

    The punctuation-free text appears instantly on the right. Copy it wherever you need it.

When it comes in handy

Text analysis

Clean punctuation out before counting words or feeding text into a script that expects plain tokens.

Making a word list

Turn a sentence into bare words for a spelling list, tag set or search query.

Normalising input

Remove the punctuation from user-entered text so entries can be compared on the words alone.

Instant & 100% private — nothing is uploaded

Every keystroke is handled right here in your browser. Your text is never sent to a server, so there is no sign-up, no email wall, and no length cap from us. Load the page once and it keeps working even if you go offline.

Frequently asked questions

Which characters count as punctuation?
The tool uses the Unicode punctuation category, which covers full stops, commas, semicolons, colons, quotes and apostrophes, question and exclamation marks, brackets of every kind, dashes, slashes and more, including the versions used in other languages. Letters, numbers and spaces are always left alone.
Does it remove symbols like $, % or +?
No. Those are mathematical or currency symbols rather than punctuation, so they are kept. This tool is focused on the marks that separate and structure words, not on symbols. If you need those gone too, strip them separately.
Why keep apostrophes and hyphens?
Apostrophes hold contractions and possessives together ("it's", "Tom's"), and hyphens join compound words ("part-time"). Removing them can change or break words, so both are kept by default and you can turn them off when you genuinely want every mark gone.

More tools

Word CounterCount words, characters, sentences and reading time live.Character CounterCount characters with or without spaces, against post limits.Case ConverterSwitch between UPPER, lower, Title, camel, snake and kebab case.Reverse Text GeneratorReverse characters, words or line order, or flip your text.URL Slug GeneratorTurn a title into a clean, lowercase, hyphenated URL slug.Text RepeaterRepeat text a set number of times with your own separator.

More from the Hivly network

Free sister tools on our other sites.

Fancy Text GeneratorType once, get 20+ copy-paste font styles in a single list.JSON Formatter & ValidatorBeautify, minify, validate JSON with a collapsible tree view.Citation GeneratorAPA, MLA, Chicago and Harvard references plus in-text citations.