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Remove Em Dashes from Text

Paste your text and this tool will remove em dashes from it, or swap each one for a space, a comma or nothing. It can also clear en dashes and hyphens. The Cleaned text box updates as you type, paste or change a setting, and a badge tells you how many dashes were changed. It handles documents of 60,000 words or more, and your text is cleaned in your browser, never uploaded or saved.

How to remove em dashes from text

Paste your text into the Your text box, or press Paste from clipboard. If your browser blocks that button, press and hold in the box and choose Paste.
Check Remove these. Only Em dash is on at the start.
Choose what goes in its place under Replace each with: Space, Nothing or Comma.
Read the Cleaned text box, then press Copy cleaned text. The button reads Copied once it has worked.

The counter shows how much of the 1,000,000-character limit you have used. Clear appears once there is text and empties the box. The badge on the result reads Nothing yet before you paste, No dashes found when nothing matched, and N dashes changed otherwise.

Replace an em dash with a space, nothing or a comma

The tool also deals with the spaces around a dash, so you never end up with a double space. Here is what each choice does to the same text.

Your text	Space	Nothing	Comma
word — word	word word	word word	word, word
word—word	word word	wordword	word, word

Notice that Nothing keeps the gap when the dash had spaces around it and closes it when the dash was tight against the words. If you want the words to run together, check the result for tight dashes such as word—word.

Dashes at the start or end of a line

A dash at the start of a line, like a bullet, or at the end of one is simply removed along with the spaces next to it. Indentation and line breaks stay as they were.

Em dash on, Replace each with: Space — First point becomes First point
Wait for it — becomes Wait for it

Dashes that sit next to each other count as one. With Hyphen on, a -- typed as a stand-in for a dash is replaced once, and the badge counts it once.

Which characters count as a dash

Each switch under Remove these covers a small family of characters.

Switch	Characters it clears
Em dash	— (em dash) and ― (horizontal bar)
En dash	– (en dash) and ‒ (figure dash)
Hyphen	- (hyphen), ‐ (Unicode hyphen) and ‑ (non-breaking hyphen)

At least one switch always stays on, so you cannot turn off the last one.

Remove hyphens from text

Turn on Hyphen when you want every hyphen gone, for example after pasting text from a PDF. Hyphens inside words and numbers are replaced too, not only the ones used as dashes.

Hyphen on, Replace each with: Space well-known becomes well known
2024-01-05 becomes 2024 01 05

Choose Nothing to join the parts instead: re-enter becomes reenter.

With Hyphen on, phone numbers, dates and compound words lose their hyphens as well. Leave it off if you only want to deal with em dashes, which is how the tool starts.

Em dash, en dash and hyphen: what is the difference

They look alike but have different jobs. The hyphen (-) joins words, as in well-known. The en dash (–) is slightly longer and usually marks a range, as in 2020–2024. The em dash (—) is the longest and sets off part of a sentence, as in she paused — then answered. Because they are separate switches, you can clear one kind and leave the others.

Everything else stays the same

Only the dashes you chose are changed. Words, punctuation and line breaks are left alone. The text box holds plain text, so bold, italics and links from where you copied it are not kept.

Frequently asked questions

How do I remove em dashes from text?

Paste your text into the Your text box. Em dash is switched on by default, so the Cleaned text box immediately shows the text with every em dash replaced by a space. Pick Nothing or Comma under Replace each with if you prefer, then press Copy cleaned text.

Can I replace an em dash with a comma?

Yes. Choose Comma under Replace each with and every em dash becomes a comma, with the spaces around it tidied so "word — word" and "word—word" both come out as "word, word". Read the result before you use it, because a comma does not suit every sentence that had a dash.

How do I remove em dashes from ChatGPT text?

Paste the reply into the Your text box and copy the result from Cleaned text. This works on any text and does not look at where it came from. Every em dash is replaced, so choose Space, Nothing or Comma depending on how you want the sentence to read.

How do I remove dashes from text online?

Paste the text, then switch on the kinds of dash you want gone under Remove these: Em dash, En dash and Hyphen. The Cleaned text box updates as you go and the badge shows how many dashes were changed. Press Copy cleaned text to take the result with you.

How do I remove hyphens from text?

Switch on Hyphen under Remove these. Every hyphen is replaced, including the ones inside words and numbers, so "well-known" becomes "well known" with Space and "2024-01-05" becomes "2024 01 05". Choose Nothing to join the pieces instead, so "re-enter" becomes "reenter".

What is the difference between an em dash, an en dash and a hyphen?

The hyphen (-) is the short one that joins words, as in well-known. The en dash (–) is a little longer and is used for ranges such as 2020–2024. The em dash (—) is the longest and marks a break in a sentence. The tool treats each as its own switch.

Does this work on long documents?

Yes. The Your text box takes up to 1,000,000 characters, shown in the counter below it, and a document of 60,000 words or more is cleaned instantly. Everything happens in your browser, so nothing is uploaded or saved.