What characters does this tool replace?

It replaces left and right curly double quotes (“ ”) with straight double quotes, left and right curly single quotes / apostrophes (‘ ’) with straight apostrophes, em dashes (—) with two hyphens (--), en dashes (–) with a single hyphen (-), the ellipsis character (…) with three dots (...), non-breaking spaces with regular spaces, and several other common typographic variants.

Will this change the meaning of my text?

The textual meaning is preserved — only the punctuation encoding changes. For most prose and technical content the substitution is invisible to readers.

Why do word processors insert these characters?

Applications like Microsoft Word and Google Docs automatically apply "smart" or "typographic" punctuation to improve the visual appearance of documents. While this looks great in print, it can cause issues in plain-text contexts.

Does the tool handle text in other languages?

Yes. The tool only replaces specific Unicode punctuation characters; all other Unicode content (accented letters, CJK characters, etc.) is left untouched.

Is my text sent to a server?

No. All processing happens in your browser using JavaScript. Your text never leaves your device.

Punctuation Normalizer

Name: Punctuation Normalizer
Availability: InStock
Author: Nham Vu

Paste any text with fancy typographic punctuation and instantly convert it to plain ASCII equivalents.

Input Text

Normalized Output

Normalized text will appear here with changes highlighted.

Substitution Reference

Original Character	Unicode	Replaced With	Description

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Summary

Paste any text with fancy typographic punctuation and instantly convert it to plain ASCII equivalents.

How it works

Paste or type your text into the input box.
The tool scans for typographic characters such as curly quotes, em dashes, and ellipses.
Each matched character is replaced with its ASCII equivalent.
Changed characters are highlighted in the output so you can review every substitution.
Click "Copy Result" to copy the normalized text to your clipboard.

Use cases

Preparing copy-pasted text for use in source code or config files.
Cleaning up Word or Google Docs content before importing into a CMS.
Normalizing CSV or TSV exports that contain smart quotes.
Fixing typographic characters that break JSON or SQL string literals.
Preprocessing text before running regex patterns that expect ASCII punctuation.
Stripping fancy dashes inserted by word processors into technical documentation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Last updated: 2026-06-09 · Reviewed by Nham Vu