How to use the Em-Dash & Smart Quote Remover

Paste text containing smart quotes (“curly quotes”), em-dashes (—), ellipses (…), or any other Unicode punctuation. Choose to convert each character to its closest ASCII equivalent (recommended) or delete it entirely. The output and a statistics breakdown appear instantly.

Pourquoi cet outil est important

Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Notion, and most AI writing tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) autocorrect plain quotes to curly quotes and double-hyphens to em-dashes. These characters look nicer but break: code strings, JSON, CSV files, email subject-line spam filters, command-line input, and database fields. AI-generated content is the #1 modern source of unwanted em-dashes.

Cas d'utilisation courants

• Cleaning AI-generated content before pasting into a CMS
• Preparing JSON or CSV strings where curly quotes break parsing
• Cleaning code comments and string literals
• Email subject lines (some clients flag curly quotes as spam)
• Database imports where smart quotes corrupt encoding
• Cleaning copy before sending to a translation service

The AI em-dash problem

AI writing tools — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot — consistently produce em-dashes (—) in long-form output. Editors trained on plain American English style guides find this jarring. The em-dash remover is the fastest way to “humanize” AI-generated content before final review — pair it with light editing for natural flow.

Foire aux questions

Will this hurt my writing style?
Replacing em-dashes with hyphens makes copy look less polished but more compatible. For final published prose, keep em-dashes. For code, CSV, JSON, and email subjects, strip them.

Why are non-breaking spaces included?
Non-breaking spaces (U+00A0) look identical to regular spaces but break some parsers. Word and Google Docs insert them after numerals and prepositions automatically.

Will this make my AI content pass detection tools?
It removes one signal but not the underlying pattern. AI content detectors look at sentence structure, vocabulary frequency, and stylistic markers far beyond punctuation. Use this tool to clean — not to evade.

Does it preserve emoji and accented letters?
Yes — only specific Unicode punctuation characters are targeted. Emoji, accented Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, and other text content pass through unchanged.