Character Converter
Pick a job: strip punctuation, remove accents, turn straight quotes into curly ones (or back), normalise how accents are stored, or convert between full width and normal letters.
Worked examples
Remove punctuation
Hello, world! Don't panic (3.14).
Hello world Don't panic 3.14
The apostrophe in Don't and the point in 3.14 are kept.
Remove accents
Crème brûlée, façade, Łódź, straße
Creme brulee, facade, Lodz, strasse
ß becomes ss, and Ł becomes L.
Curl quotes
"Hello," she said. 'It's fine.'
“Hello,” she said. ‘It’s fine.’
Opening and closing marks differ, and the apostrophe in It's is closing.
About Character Converter
Text copied from different places carries small differences that cause big problems. Punctuation gets in the way of word counts and comparisons. Accents break searches and file names. Straight quotes look unfinished in a published document, and curly quotes can break code. Two words that look identical may not match because one stores é as a single character and the other as e plus an accent. This tool covers those jobs in one place.
Remove punctuation, keeping apostrophes and hyphens inside words and the points inside numbers if you wish. Remove accents, including letters such as ß and ø that have no accent form. Curl quotes with apostrophes handled properly, or straighten them. Normalise Unicode in any of the four standard forms. Or switch between full width and normal letters. Only the change you ask for is made, and other alphabets, emoji and your own spacing are left alone.
How to use Character Converter
- Paste your text into the box.
- Choose the job from the first menu.
- Set the options that appear for that job.
- Copy the result and check the note under it for how many characters were changed.
Common uses
- Preparing text for a word count or a comparison by removing punctuation
- Making file names, web addresses or search terms from words with accents
- Tidying quote marks in a document, or making them plain for code
- Making sure two visually identical strings really match
Frequently asked questions
Will removing punctuation spoil contractions?
Not by default. Apostrophes between letters, as in don't, hyphens between letters, and points or commas between digits, as in 3.14, are kept unless you untick those options.
What does remove accents do with other alphabets?
Nothing. Only accents on Latin letters are removed, and letters from other scripts, emoji and symbols stay exactly as typed.
How are curly quotes decided?
A quote at the start of text, or after a space or an opening bracket, opens. Otherwise it closes. An apostrophe inside a word is a closing mark, and elisions such as '90s get an apostrophe. Measurements like 5'10" can be left straight.
What is the difference between the Unicode forms?
NFC joins letters with their accents into single characters, and NFD splits them. NFKC and NFKD do the same and also replace look-alike characters such as the fi ligature or circled digits with plain ones.