What Are Special Characters?
Special characters include punctuation, symbols, and anything that isn't a letter or number. Our Special Character Remover strips these out, leaving you with clean alphanumeric text.
Characters Removed
| Category | Examples | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Punctuation | . , ! ? ; : | Removed |
| Symbols | @ # $ % ^ & | Removed |
| Brackets | ( ) [ ] { } | Removed |
| Letters & Numbers | A-Z a-z 0-9 | Kept |
⚠️ Data Loss Warning
This is a destructive operation! Email addresses become "exampleemailcom", phone numbers lose dashes. Make sure you actually want to remove all special characters.
Common Use Cases
Creating Identifiers
Many systems only accept alphanumeric IDs. Strip special characters to create valid usernames, file names, or database keys.
URL Slugs
URL-friendly slugs need letters, numbers, and hyphens only. Remove special characters before adding separators.
Text Analysis
Word frequency analysis and NLP often preprocess text by removing punctuation to focus on actual words.
Frequently Asked Questions
What about spaces?
By default, spaces are kept to preserve word separation. Enable "Remove spaces too" if you want a continuous string.
Can I keep specific characters?
This tool removes all non-alphanumeric characters uniformly. For selective removal, use regex find-replace in a text editor.