Text Cleaner
Paste text copied from Word, Google Docs or PDFs to strip smart quotes, fix broken dashes, and purge invisible characters.
Why Smart Quotes and Invisible Characters Break Code
Word processors automatically convert typewriter straight quotes into directional "smart quotes" (U+201C, U+201D, U+2018, U+2019). While pleasing in print, these characters cause fatal syntax errors in code, SQL queries, JSON files, and command-line terminals. For a deep dive on when to use each, read our curly vs straight quotes guide.
Zero-width spaces (U+200B) and non-breaking spaces (U+00A0) frequently hide in text copied from websites or PDFs. They are invisible to the eye but register as invalid tokens in programming languages and disrupt word-count calculations. If text copied from Word or AI tools renders corrupted online, check our guides on why Word breaks accented characters on websites and why AI chatbots get accented letters wrong.
Need to inspect individual characters and their codepoints? Use the Unicode Inspector or count characters with the Character Counter.
Last verified Sep 2026 · Windows 11 24H2, macOS 15.1 · How we test