Text Cleaner
Free online text cleaner — cleaning text pasted from PDFs, Word or websites.
Clean text pasted from PDFs, Word, and websites instantly
Text copied from PDFs, Microsoft Word documents, rich-text editors, and websites is frequently contaminated with invisible Unicode garbage characters — zero-width spaces, non-breaking spaces, curly smart quotes, byte-order marks (BOM), soft hyphens, and bidirectional text markers. These invisible characters cause silent failures in databases, search engines, APIs, and code that expect clean ASCII or normalized UTF-8 input. ToolJiffy Text Cleaner strips all contamination instantly in your browser.
What contamination does Text Cleaner remove?
- Invisible Unicode characters: Zero-Width Space (U+200B), Zero-Width Non-Joiner (U+200C), Zero-Width Joiner (U+200D), Byte Order Mark (U+FEFF), Soft Hyphen (U+00AD), Bidirectional marks (U+200E, U+200F)
- Non-breaking spaces: HTML
(U+00A0) that look like spaces but break string comparisons and database queries - Smart/curly quotes: Microsoft Word's auto-correct replacements (\u2018\u2019\u201c\u201d) to straight ASCII equivalents
- Em-dashes and en-dashes: Typography dashes (\u2014\u2013) to standard hyphens for code and data compatibility
- Redundant whitespace: Multiple consecutive spaces, tabs, and mixed whitespace collapsed to single spaces
- Leading/trailing whitespace: Per-line and whole-document trim options
Why invisible characters cause serious problems
A zero-width space character (U+200B) is completely invisible to the human eye but fully visible to computers. A SQL query with a zero-width space in a username field will fail to find the record. A JSON key with a BOM prefix will fail to parse. An email address with a non-breaking space will fail validation. These errors are notoriously hard to diagnose because the text looks perfectly clean in every text editor. ToolJiffy Text Cleaner catches all of them before they reach your database, API, or code.
Browser-native regex and Unicode normalization engine
ToolJiffy applies a chain of JavaScript regular expressions and Unicode character class replacements, running entirely in-browser. It uses str.replace(/\u200B/g, '')-style transformations for each character category, optionally applies String.prototype.normalize('NFC') for Unicode canonical composition, and optionally converts typographic characters to their ASCII equivalents.
Step-by-step guide to cleaning text
- Paste your text: Copy-paste text from a PDF, Word document, or website into the editor above.
- Select cleaning options: Choose which transformations to apply — invisible characters, smart quotes, dashes, whitespace normalization.
- Copy clean output: Click Clean Text and copy the sanitized result for use in your database, API, or code.
Frequently asked questions
What does the Text Cleaner tool do?
ToolJiffy Text Cleaner removes invisible Unicode garbage characters, smart quotes, curly apostrophes, non-breaking spaces, zero-width joiners, BOM markers, and other copy-paste contamination from PDFs, Word documents, and websites.
What invisible Unicode characters does Text Cleaner remove?
Removes Zero-Width Space (U+200B), Zero-Width Non-Joiner (U+200C), Zero-Width Joiner (U+200D), Left-to-Right Mark (U+200E), Right-to-Left Mark (U+200F), Byte Order Mark (U+FEFF), Soft Hyphen (U+00AD), and Non-Breaking Space (U+00A0).
Is my text data sent to any cloud server?
No. All text transformation runs 100% in browser memory using JavaScript string methods. Your text never leaves your device.
Can Text Cleaner fix smart quotes and curly apostrophes?
Yes. Optionally convert smart/curly quotes (\u2018\u2019\u201c\u201d) to straight ASCII quotes and apostrophes.
Why does text copied from PDFs contain garbage characters?
PDF copy-paste can insert ligature substitutions, soft hyphens, non-breaking spaces, and encoding conversion artifacts depending on the PDF font encoding.
Can I normalize multiple spaces and tabs to single spaces?
Yes. Text Cleaner collapses consecutive whitespace runs into a single standard ASCII space.
Does Text Cleaner convert em-dashes to hyphens?
Yes. Optionally convert em-dashes (\u2014) and en-dashes (\u2013) to standard ASCII hyphens for database and code compatibility.
Is ToolJiffy Text Cleaner free without limits?
Yes. ToolJiffy is 100% free with unlimited text processing, zero account registration, and zero server uploads.
Related text processing tools
Remove whitespace with Whitespace Remover, remove line breaks with Line Break Remover, find and replace with Find and Replace, or check readability with Readability Checker.