How to Fix Double Spaces and Repeated Punctuation
Text copied from a PDF, an email or a word processor often arrives with damage that is hard to see: two spaces after a full stop, a comma floating away from its word, three exclamation marks where one was meant. The words are right; the spacing is not.
The Punctuation Fixer repairs doubled spaces and repeated punctuation in pasted text, in the browser. It is a cleaning step, not a style checker. It will not tell you whether the sentence needs a comma, only whether the marks are spaced and repeated consistently.
Quick answer
Remove runs of spaces, close the gap before punctuation, and reduce repeated commas, full stops, question marks and slashes to one. Keep deliberate ellipses and any repetition that carries meaning, then proofread the cleaned text before you publish it.
What to fix, and in what order
- Two or more spaces between words, including after a full stop.
- A space before a comma, full stop, colon, semicolon, question mark or exclamation mark.
- No space after a comma or sentence-ending mark, so words run together.
- Repeated marks such as “!!”, “??” or “.,” and repeated slashes that are not part of a protocol.
- Tabs and blank lines left over from a table or a PDF column.
Some of these are invisible in a proportional font. Turning on a visible-space mode in your editor, if it has one, makes the first pass easier.
A space before a comma is always wrong in running prose. A space before a full stop can survive a copy from a justified PDF and is easy to miss. Closing those gaps changes nothing about the words, which makes it a safe first step.
Then look at the space after punctuation. A missing space after a comma or full stop is more serious than a double space because it joins two words. Search for a full stop followed immediately by a capital letter, and for a comma followed immediately by a letter.
Know the exceptions
Not every repeated mark is an error. An ellipsis is three full stops, and some house styles use a spaced ellipsis. “?!” can be deliberate in informal writing. A slash may be repeated in a path or a separator. Code, quoted material and legal text should be left alone unless you have permission to alter them.
That is why a bulk fix needs a read-through. The tool can reduce a run of marks; only you can decide whether the run was intended.
Do not let cleaning change the wording
Spacing fixes are safe because they do not touch words. If you also retype or rephrase while cleaning, you lose the ability to compare before and after. Keep the original in a separate file or a second tab, and work on a copy.
After the mechanical pass, read for the things a spacing tool cannot see: a sentence that begins with a lower-case letter because the full stop was missing, a list that has lost its numbering, a hyphen that has become a dash. These are editing decisions, not spacing decisions.
Make the next copy cleaner
If you paste from the same source often, find out why the damage appears. A PDF exported from a layout program, a table copied from a web page and a document converted between formats each produce their own patterns. Fixing the export, or pasting as plain text, saves the repair later.
Run the pasted text through the Punctuation Fixer, read the result once, and only then move it into your document. If the capitalisation is also inconsistent, the Case Converter handles that separately; for lists that need reordering afterwards, use the Alphabetical Order Tool.
Common questions
How do I remove double spaces from copied text?
Paste the text into the Punctuation Fixer, which removes runs of two or more spaces, closes gaps before punctuation and reduces repeated marks. It runs in the browser and does not change the words. Keep the original in another tab so you can compare before and after, then read the result once.
Is it safe to reduce repeated punctuation automatically?
Usually, but not always. An ellipsis is three full stops, "?!" can be deliberate in informal writing, and repeated slashes may belong to a path. Code, quoted material and legal text should be left alone unless you have permission to change them. A bulk fix still needs a read-through.
What should I check after cleaning up spacing?
Read for problems a spacing tool cannot see: a sentence beginning with a lower-case letter because a full stop was missing, a list that has lost its numbering, or a hyphen that has become a dash. These are editing decisions. Fixing the export or pasting as plain text can stop the same damage recurring.