Copying text from PDFs or academic papers often leaves you with messy dashes that break your formatting. These stray marks make your content look cluttered and hard to read when you paste them into a chat or a clean document. Dash Remover fixes this problem by stripping away unwanted horizontal marks and fixing the spacing around them. You get a clean block of text that is ready for any platform so you can present your work without formatting glitches.

What is the Dash Remover?

This tool is a text processing utility that scans for and deletes specific types of punctuation marks. You provide text containing various dashes as the input, and the tool provides a sanitized version along with a count of removed items as the output.

Key Features

• Custom Removal Modes: Choose to delete all dashes or just specific long dashes.
• Smart Spacing: Automatically fixes double spaces left behind after a removal.
• Visual Stats: Displays exactly how many marks the tool found and removed.
• Instant Action: Processes long paragraphs in under a second.

Prerequisites

• A web browser on a smartphone, tablet, or laptop.
• Messy text copied from a PDF, document, or website.
• An active internet connection to access the tool page.

How to Use Dash Remover

1. Copy your text: Select the content with the unwanted dashes from your source file.
2. Paste into the box: Click the large white area on the tool page and paste your content.
3. Select a removal mode: Click one of the three red action buttons.
   • Remove All Dashes: Deletes every horizontal mark including hyphens. Use this for a total wipe.
   • Remove Em & En Only: Deletes long dashes (—) but keeps short hyphens. Use this for normal reading text.
   • Remove & Add Spaces: Swaps dashes for single spaces. Use this to prevent words from sticking together.
   • Note: You will see a “Results” box appear below the buttons once you click.
4. Check the stats: Look at the “Dashes Removed” counter to verify the tool found the errors.
   • Error Check: If the count stays at zero, your text might contain underscores (_) instead of dashes.
5. Copy the result: Click the red “Copy Cleaned Text” button.
   • What happens: The button will turn green and say “Copied!” to confirm the text is ready to paste.

Why Dash Removal Matters

Cleaning text manually is a slow process that often leads to errors. If you miss a stray em-dash in a professional bio or a technical caption, it looks like a typo. This tool uses code to ensure every single mark is caught, reducing the risk of a messy final product.

Who Benefits from This Tool?

User Group	The Problem	The Benefit	Tip
Academic Researchers	PDF citations include long dashes that break search queries.	Creates clean text for better search and database entry.	Use “Remove & Add Spaces” to ensure citations remain readable.
Social Media Managers	Long dashes from notes apps look weird in certain fonts.	Keeps captions looking sleek and uniform across apps.	Run a quick check before posting to ensure your hashtags don’t have hidden hyphens.
Data Analysts	Dashes in CSV files or lists cause errors in software.	Prepares data for clean import into spreadsheets.	Use “Remove All Dashes” if you are cleaning phone numbers or ID codes.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Choosing the Wrong Mode: If you remove “All Dashes” from a hyphenated word like “high-end,” it will become “highend.” Use “Em & En Only” to protect word structure.
• Pasting Blank Text: If the results do not show up, ensure you actually hit “Paste” in the main box.
• Forgetting the Space Fix: If you remove a dash that was separating two words, they might merge. Always use the “Remove & Add Spaces” button if the dash was used in place of a comma or period.