Overview
Paste any text and strip punctuation from it, with six independently toggleable categories rather than a single all-or-nothing switch: periods, commas, exclamation marks, question marks, quotes (straight and curly), and a catch-all "other symbols" group covering everything from colons and parentheses to em dashes and ampersands. All six are removed by default - a "Remove all" button resets to that state, and "Keep all" clears every toggle if you'd rather build up which categories to strip one at a time. Both the input and result show a live character count, so the exact number of characters removed is always visible rather than something you'd have to calculate yourself. Useful for cleaning text before a word-frequency analysis, preparing a word list for a game or puzzle, or stripping formatting punctuation from copied text. Runs entirely client-side.
Best for: Cleaning text before a word-frequency analysis or word game
How to use this tool
- Paste your text. Any plain text with punctuation you want to strip out.
- Toggle categories on or off. Periods, commas, exclamation marks, question marks, quotes, and other symbols - each independent.
- Read the result live. The output updates immediately as you toggle categories, no button press required.
- Check the character count. Before and after counts show exactly how many characters were removed.
Why use this tool
Six independent categories
Strip just quotes, just periods, or any combination - not limited to an all-or-nothing toggle.
Live character counts
See exactly how many characters were removed, not just the resulting text.
Sensible default, easy override
Starts with everything removed, but "Keep all" clears it if you want to build up categories manually.
Handles curly and straight quotes
Both straight (' ") and curly ( ‘ ’ “ ”) quote marks are covered by the quotes category.
Frequently asked questions
The catch-all category covers punctuation and symbols outside the five specific categories: semicolons, colons, hyphens and dashes (including em and en dashes), parentheses, brackets, braces, slashes, and common symbols like &, #, @, %, and *. Periods, commas, exclamation marks, question marks, and quotes each get their own dedicated toggle so they can be kept or removed independently of this group.
Yes, if the quotes category is enabled - the apostrophe in a contraction and a quotation mark are the same character as far as the tool can tell, so toggling quotes off will turn "don't" into "dont". If you need contractions to stay intact while still removing other punctuation, turn off just the quotes category and leave the rest enabled.
Yes - click "Keep all" to clear every category, then enable just the one you want (commas, in this example). Each of the six categories works independently, so any combination of removed and kept punctuation is possible.