Free tool
Remove Line Breaks Without Wrecking Your Paragraphs
Text copied from a PDF or a narrow email arrives chopped into short lines. Paste it in, pick how much to join, and the cleaned result appears beside it while you type.
Line breaks
Tidy
Text is changed in your browser and never uploaded. Only your option choices are kept on your own device, not the text.
The copied PDF problem
A PDF stores each line as its own piece, so copying a paragraph from one gives you a hard break at the end of every line. Pasted into a CMS or a design tool, that looks broken. The Keep paragraphs mode joins the lines inside each paragraph and leaves a blank line between paragraphs, which restores flowing text.
If the source has no blank lines at all, switch on Find paragraphs without blank lines. The tool then looks for a line that ends a sentence and is clearly shorter than the rest, and treats that as a paragraph end. It tells you how many it found, and you can turn it off if it guessed wrong.
The four modes
| Mode | What it does |
|---|---|
| Keep paragraphs | Joins lines in each paragraph, keeps blank lines between paragraphs |
| One line | Removes every break so the text becomes a single line |
| Remove empty lines | Keeps your lines as they are and drops the blank ones |
| Replace with | Puts a character of your choice in place of each break |
The presets for the last mode are a comma, a semicolon, a pipe, a tab, an html break tag and nothing. You can also type your own, and the symbols backslash n and backslash t stand for a new line and a tab.
The tidy options
- Keep list items on their own lines stops bullets and numbered items from being glued into the paragraph above.
- Join words split by a hyphen mends a word cut at a line end, including the invisible soft hyphen that PDFs often hold.
- Trim spaces at line ends removes stray spaces before lines are joined.
- Turn double spaces into one also pulls a space back from before a comma or full stop.
A hyphen is only removed when a lower case letter sits on each side of the break, so a real compound such as a dash between a number and a word is left as it is.
Turning a column into a list
Pick Replace with and a comma to turn a pasted spreadsheet column into one line you can drop into a field, or use a tab to go the other way for pasting into a sheet. The line under the result says how many breaks were removed and how many remain, so you can check the change at a glance. You can also open a text file, and the cleaned result can be copied or saved as a text file.
A worked example
Imagine a paragraph copied from a report where each line ends after about sixty characters and one word is cut with a hyphen at the end of a line. In Keep paragraphs mode with the hyphen option on, the cut word is rejoined and the lines become one flowing paragraph. A bullet list that sat right below it stays as separate lines because the list items option is on. The Example button loads a short sample like this, so you can see each option change the result before pasting your own.
Choices that go wrong
- Using One line on text that has paragraphs, which merges everything into a single block.
- Leaving the hyphen option on for text that has real hyphenated words at line ends, such as a hyphen followed by a capital letter. Check those by eye.
- Pasting rows from a table and expecting columns to stay. Line breaks inside a cell are not the same as the end of a row.
Pasting into a site builder
Stray breaks show up as odd gaps once copy lands in a page builder. Cleaning it first saves a round of tidying, and our Webflow maintenance page describes how we keep content tidy after launch.
Frequently asked questions
How do I remove line breaks but keep paragraphs?
Use Keep paragraphs mode. It joins the lines inside each paragraph and keeps a blank line between paragraphs.
Why did my text become one long line?
You are probably in One line mode. Switch to Keep paragraphs to keep the paragraph breaks.
Can it fix words split with a hyphen at the end of a line?
Yes, with Join words split by a hyphen switched on. It only joins when lower case letters sit on both sides of the break.
Can I replace each break with a comma?
Yes. Choose Replace with, then press Comma or type your own character.
Does it work on Word or PDF files?
You can open plain text files here. For a PDF, copy its text out first and paste it into the box.
Is my text uploaded?
No. The cleaning is done in your browser. Only your option choices are saved on your own device.
Will it keep my bullet points?
Yes, when Keep list items on their own lines is on. Lines that start with a bullet, a number or a small letter followed by a full stop or bracket stay separate.
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