About the Remove Punctuation
Counting words, building a search index and comparing two drafts all work better once the punctuation is gone, because a word followed by a comma should not be a different token from the same word on its own. This tool deletes every punctuation mark and every symbol by Unicode category, then collapses the double spaces the removals leave behind so the words stay one space apart.
The categories are wide. Straight and curly quotes, dashes, brackets, ellipses, currency signs, arrows, mathematical operators and emoji all go; letters, digits, spaces and line breaks all stay.
Apostrophes are the case that catches people out. They are punctuation, so contractions lose them: don't becomes dont, it's becomes its, and possessives fall together with plurals. For a frequency count that is usually harmless, because the forms group anyway, but for text somebody will read it is not. The curly apostrophe a word processor inserts automatically is removed in the same sweep. When contractions matter, expand them first with Find and Replace.
Sentence boundaries disappear with the full stops, so run this after anything that needs them. Then Word Frequency Counter produces the counts, and Remove Numbers strips the digits when you want letters only.
How to use
- Paste the text.
- Copy the result without punctuation.
- Chain Remove Numbers to keep only letters.
Common questions
- Are apostrophes in contractions removed?
- Yes, so "don't" becomes "dont". Replace them first with Find and Replace if you need to keep them.
- Does it remove the euro or hash symbol?
- Yes, symbols are removed along with punctuation.
- Are double spaces cleaned up?
- Yes, spaces left by removed punctuation are collapsed.