Em dash remover
Paste a text, choose what the em dash becomes (comma, period, colon, semicolon, spaced hyphen, parentheses, or nothing) and get the rewritten text with a diff and a count. Optional: en dashes and double hyphens too.
Nothing is sent to a server: the text stays in your browser, the tool runs offline once the page is loaded. Ctrl+Enter runs it.
- Targets U+2014 (em dash), optionally U+2013 (en dash) and the double hyphen --
- Comma mode writes "word, word"; period mode ends the sentence and capitalizes the next word; colon and semicolon modes keep the sentence in one piece
- Parentheses mode wraps the text between two dashes; a lone dash at the end of a sentence becomes a comma
- En dashes between numbers (2020—2024, pages 12—18) are kept even when en dashes are ticked
- A dash that starts a line (dialogue, list) is left alone
Why people remove em dashes
The em dash (—) is a perfectly good punctuation mark. It became a talking point in 2025 because AI assistants use it far more than most human writers do, to the point that readers started reading a dash-heavy paragraph as machine-written. Style guides had their own reasons long before: many house styles prefer commas or a colon, some technical documentation forbids em dashes for readability, and plain-text formats (subtitles, SMS, some CMS fields) turn the character into a question mark or a mojibake sequence.
Deleting the character is not enough: an em dash carries a grammatical role, and the sentence needs a replacement that keeps its meaning. This tool does the replacement, shows you exactly what changed and lets you pick the mark that fits your style.
Replacement modes
| Mode | Input | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Comma (default) | The tool is fast—it runs locally. | The tool is fast, it runs locally. |
| Period | The tool is fast—it runs locally. | The tool is fast. It runs locally. |
| Semicolon | The tool is fast—it runs locally. | The tool is fast; it runs locally. |
| Colon | One rule—no server. | One rule: no server. |
| Spaced hyphen | fast—it runs | fast - it runs |
| Parentheses | The tool—a script—runs locally. | The tool (a script) runs locally. |
| Space | fast—it runs | fast it runs |
| Remove | fast—it runs | fastit runs (use only for typographic debris) |
Spacing is normalized in every mode: a dash written with or without spaces around it gives the same output. In parentheses mode a dash pair inside one sentence becomes an aside; a single dash left over falls back to a comma. In period mode the word after the dash is capitalized so the new sentence reads correctly.
En dashes and double hyphens
The en dash (U+2013) is shorter and has other jobs: number ranges (2020 to 2024) and compound adjectives. It is off by default; when you tick it, ranges between digits are protected and only en dashes used as a pause are replaced. The double hyphen "--" is the plain-text stand-in for an em dash and is on by default, because it almost always means the same thing.
Related tools
To clean dashes together with hidden characters, Markdown, smart quotes and spacing in one pass, use the AI text cleaner. To measure how dash-heavy a text is next to other markers (vocabulary, connectors, list ratio), the AI words checker gives a per-category count. Curly quotes are handled by smart quotes to straight quotes.
None of this touches a statistical watermark: that mark lives in the choice of words and survives any character clean-up. If that is your question, the AI text watermark remover hub explains which tool applies.
Privacy
The replacement runs in your browser; your text is never sent, stored or logged. The Copy link button shares only your settings, never the text.
Unmarker is an independent product, not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic.
Questions people ask
What should I replace an em dash with?
It depends on the role of the dash. An aside between two dashes becomes parentheses or a pair of commas; a dash before a conclusion becomes a colon; a dash joining two independent clauses becomes a period or a semicolon. Comma is the safest default; the diff view lets you check each case.
Does the tool remove en dashes too?
Only if you tick the option. En dashes between numbers, like 2020 to 2024 written with a dash, are kept because they mean a range.
Why does the period mode change capitalization?
A period ends the sentence, so the next word starts a new one and is capitalized. Words that already start with a capital or a digit are left as they are.
Will this make my text pass an AI detector?
We do not know and neither does anyone else: detectors are style guessers with high false-positive rates. Removing em dashes changes one visible habit; it does not touch a statistical watermark, which is in the choice of words.
Can I share my settings?
Yes. Copy link to this tool puts the mode and options in the page address; the text itself is never included.