Text
Remove Punctuation
Input
Output
Run process to generate output.
Frequently Asked Questions
What counts as punctuation?
Standard punctuation includes: . , ! ? ; : ' " ( ) [ ] { } - — … / \ | @ # $ % ^ & * + = ~ ` < >. This tool removes all standard ASCII punctuation. Unicode punctuation (curly quotes, em dashes, ellipsis characters) can optionally be included.
Why would I want to remove punctuation?
Common uses: preparing text for word frequency analysis, natural language processing (tokenization), cleaning scraped data before ingestion, creating word clouds, or testing text before applying new punctuation formatting.
Does removing punctuation affect sentence meaning?
Yes, potentially. Punctuation is part of meaning: 'Let's eat, Grandma.' vs 'Let's eat Grandma.' Removing punctuation is a lossy operation — appropriate for data analysis but not for preserving the original meaning of text.