How do I remove accents from text?

Check 'Remove accents / diacritics'. The tool uses Unicode normalization (NFD) to separate base letters from their accent marks, then removes the accent characters. For example, café → cafe, naïve → naive.

How do I strip non-ASCII characters?

Check 'Remove non-ASCII characters' to keep only characters in the 0-127 ASCII range, stripping all Unicode letters, symbols, and emoji.

Text Cleaner - Free Online Punctuation and Accent Remover

Remove accents / diacritics Remove punctuation Remove non-ASCII characters Remove numbers Remove emoji Remove non-printable chars Strip HTML tags Collapse multiple spaces

Can this clean text copied from Microsoft Word?

Yes - enable the smart quotes, em-dash, and ligature normalisation options to convert Word's typographic characters (curly quotes, em dashes, ellipsis) to plain ASCII equivalents that are safe in code and databases.

Does stripping HTML also remove the content inside tags?

Only the tags themselves are removed - the inner text content is preserved. To remove both tags and their content (e.g., script or style blocks), use the advanced HTML tag removal mode which strips specified tag types entirely.

Cleaning Text with the Scrubbing Tool

Input your content into the main text area.
Select the cleaning rules: remove accents, strip special characters, or delete punctuation.
The results generate immediately according to your chosen normalization settings.
Copy the sanitized output or download it as a clean text file.

Text Cleaner offers a powerful way to remove punctuation, accents, special characters, and non-ASCII symbols from any block of text. This free online text scrubber processes your data entirely within your browser, making it ideal for developers and data entry professionals who need to normalize text for database entry or code documentation. By using advanced Unicode normalization, it can strip diacritics while preserving the base characters, or perform a total removal of non-printable characters and HTML tags.

Technical Text Scrubber and Normalization

This accent remover and punctuation remover is built for speed and privacy. Whether you need to strip emoji for a legacy system or normalize smart quotes from a word processor, this utility handles large datasets without latency. The tool also includes options to remove numbers, collapse multiple spaces, and strip non-ASCII characters, providing a comprehensive suite for preparing clean, standardized text for any application or technical environment.

Normalize strings by stripping punctuation and special characters
Advanced accent remover using Unicode NFD normalization
Option to remove non-ASCII and non-printable characters for legacy systems
Bulk text scrubber that handles multi-line inputs and large files
100% client-side execution ensures your data never leaves your machine

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the Text Cleaner do?

It removes unwanted characters from text - punctuation, accents, special symbols, HTML tags, extra whitespace, or non-ASCII content - depending on which toggles you enable. Each rule is independent, so you can combine them freely.

What is Unicode NFD normalization and why does it help remove accents?

NFD (Canonical Decomposition) splits accented characters like é into their base letter (e) plus a separate combining diacritic mark. Once decomposed, the diacritic is a distinct Unicode code point in the "Combining Diacritical Marks" range (U+0300–U+036F) and can be stripped with a simple regex, leaving just the base letter.

Will removing special characters break JSON or code?

Possibly - quotes, curly braces, and angle brackets are "special characters". Run the cleaner only on human-readable prose; don't pipe code or JSON through it unless you specifically want those characters stripped.

Can it handle very large pastes?

Yes - everything runs synchronously in the browser's JS engine. Inputs up to several MB process instantly. For files over 50 MB a command-line tool like sed or Python will be faster.

Streamline your data preparation and ensure your strings are perfectly formatted with this efficient Text Cleaner. Keep this utility bookmarked for the next time you need a fast and reliable punctuation and accent remover.

Text Cleaner online

Remove punctuation, accents, special characters, and Unicode from text - runs in your browser