Em Dash Cleaner
Keep one em dash per sentence and turn the extras into the punctuation the sentence needed. Your original stays beside the result; nothing else in the text is touched.
Before
Cleaning runs only when you ask, in this tab. No text is sent or saved. The limit counts UTF-16 units; an astral emoji uses two. Long pastes are never cut.
After
Your cleaned text will appear here. The original stays in the Before panel.
Enter text, then choose Clean dashes.
One dash per sentence, the rest becomes punctuation
Generated prose reaches for the em dash to join two half-thoughts, and the rhythm gives the draft away by the third sentence. The cleaner keeps the first dash in each sentence and rewrites the others as a comma, a semicolon or a colon, whichever you choose. A dash that already follows a comma simply disappears, and one that closes a sentence is removed rather than replaced.
Spaced hyphens and en dashes are left alone unless you opt in, and closed-up ones never change: 2019–2021 stays a range, e-mail stays a word. The tool does not rephrase, restructure or shorten anything, and it does not claim to make text pass a detector.
Why keep one? No style manual sets a limit on em dashes; the rule they do give is about stacking one aside inside another. Read what the style guides say about em dashes.
Dashes found, kept and replaced are separate counts. Changing a rule or editing the original clears the result until you clean again.
Before and after
Each result below was produced by this page’s own cleaner, with the setting named on the card. The counts are the ones the tool reports for that text.
The rollout slipped — twice — and the team knew it. Every release note said the same thing — clear, confident, and — somehow — written by nobody.
The rollout slipped — twice, and the team knew it. Every release note said the same thing — clear, confident, and, somehow, written by nobody.
- Found
- 5
- Kept
- 2
- Replaced
- 3
Two sentences, so two dashes stay: the first in each. The other three become commas, including both dashes around “somehow”.
— I know — she said — quietly.
— I know — she said, quietly.
- Found
- 3
- Kept
- 2
- Replaced
- 1
The opening dash marks a line of dialogue. It is kept and does not count as the sentence’s first dash, so the one after “I know” stays too and only the last becomes a comma.
The draft is ready — the review is not — we ship on Monday.
The draft is ready — the review is not; we ship on Monday.
- Found
- 2
- Kept
- 1
- Replaced
- 1
What follows the second dash could stand as a sentence of its own, so the semicolon setting suits it better than the default comma.
Signups rose - twice – between 2019–2021, and the e-mail list grew by 1 - 2 percent.
Signups rose - twice, between 2019–2021, and the e-mail list grew by 1, 2 percent.
- Found
- 3
- Kept
- 1
- Replaced
- 2
Closed-up 2019–2021 and e-mail are left alone, but the spaced range 1 - 2 reads as a dash once the option is on. With the option off, this sentence comes back unchanged.
Frequently asked questions
Which dashes does the cleaner change?
Em dashes, including runs of several and ones written without spaces. Spaced hyphens and en dashes are only included when you opt in. A dash that opens a line of dialogue is left alone, one that follows a comma, semicolon or colon disappears, and one that closes a sentence is removed rather than replaced. Sentences end at a period, exclamation mark, question mark or line break.
Why is the first dash in a sentence kept?
One dash can carry a real aside; it is the second and third in the same sentence that read as a tic, and they are what gives generated prose away. Keeping the first is the default, not a rule: uncheck it to replace every dash, or change the punctuation the others become. Nothing else in the sentence is rephrased.
What happens to number ranges and hyphenated words?
Closed-up ones never change. 2019–2021, pages 10-12, e-mail and -5 are closed-up dashes or hyphens, and the cleaner only ever matches a hyphen or en dash with a space on both sides, and only when you have asked it to. Once you do, a spaced range such as 10 - 12 is treated as a dash too. Your original stays in the Before panel, and copying the result is a separate, explicit step.
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