Em Dash & Special Character Remover
Replace typographic punctuation (em dashes, smart quotes, ellipsis) with plain ASCII equivalents.
Characters: 0
Why remove em dashes and smart quotes?
Word processors and modern apps auto-insert typographic characters like em dashes, smart quotes, and ellipses. These cause issues in code, CSV files, SQL queries, and plaintext logs where only ASCII is expected. This tool replaces them with their nearest ASCII equivalent and also strips invisible characters like zero-width spaces and non-breaking spaces.
Built and maintained by Meet Shah · Last updated
What this tool is used for
- Converting smart punctuation to ASCII for a system that mangles it.
- Normalising text pasted from a word processor before committing it.
- Preparing copy for a plain-text channel or a legacy field.
- Removing curly quotes that break a CSV or a code snippet.
- Making punctuation consistent across text from several sources.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the difference between the dash characters?
- Three distinct characters: hyphen (-, U+002D) joins words, en dash (–, U+2013) spans ranges like 1990–1999, em dash (—, U+2014) breaks a sentence. The em dash is roughly the width of a capital M, which is where the name comes from.
- Why would I want to remove em dashes?
- Two common reasons: plain-text systems and older encodings mangle them into artefacts like —, and heavy em dash use has become a recognised tell of AI-generated prose, so writers often normalise them out.
- What should they be replaced with?
- It depends on the role. A parenthetical em dash usually becomes a comma pair or brackets; a sentence break becomes a semicolon or full stop. Replacing every em dash with a hyphen is the quick option but reads poorly.
- Should there be spaces around an em dash?
- Style guides disagree. US convention (Chicago) sets it closed up — like this—whereas UK convention (Oxford) uses a spaced en dash instead. Both are correct within their own house style; mixing them is what looks wrong.
- How do I type one?
- Alt+0151 on Windows, Option+Shift+Hyphen on macOS, Ctrl+Shift+U then 2014 on Linux. Most word processors also autocorrect a double hyphen into one, which is how they end up in text unintentionally.
- Why do em dashes appear in text I did not type?
- Autocorrect. Word processors and messaging apps convert a double hyphen, and sometimes a spaced single hyphen, into an em or en dash automatically — which is why they turn up in text pasted from those tools.
- Does the en dash need different handling?
- Yes. An en dash marks ranges and connections — `2020–2024`, `London–Paris` — where replacing it with a hyphen is fine, but replacing it with a comma or a space is not. The two dashes do different jobs.
Common errors and gotchas
- Converting quotes inside code or a regex, where the exact character is significant.
- Replacing an en dash in a number range with a hyphen and losing the distinction.
- Flattening an ellipsis to three periods where the spacing then reads badly.
- Assuming the replacement is reversible, since the original distinctions are gone.
- Running it on text where typographic punctuation was the deliberate house style.
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