Trim & Clean
What It Does
Collapses multiple consecutive spaces within each line into a single space.
How to Use
- Paste text with irregular spacing into the input area.
- Toggle options if needed.
- Click “Clean”.
- The output shows each line with only single spaces between words.
Options Explained
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Include tabs | Also collapse tab characters along with spaces |
| Keep double space after punctuation | Preserve two spaces after period/question mark (typewriter convention) |
| Collapse to non-breaking space | Replace with non-breaking spaces instead of regular ones |
Example
Input: hello world foo → Output: hello world foo
About Remove Extra Spaces
The Remove Extra Spaces tool collapses consecutive spaces and optionally tabs into single spaces throughout your text. This is one of the most frequently needed text cleanup operations, especially when working with text that has been copied from PDFs, OCR-scanned documents, or formatted emails where irregular spacing creeps in. The tool can also preserve double spaces after punctuation for those who follow traditional typographic conventions.
Irregular spacing is a common problem in data processing pipelines. Text extracted from scanned documents via optical character recognition (OCR) often contains multiple spaces where only one belongs. Content pasted from rich-text editors or web pages may carry hidden extra whitespace. Log files and command output sometimes use variable spacing for alignment, and collapsing it makes the data easier to parse programmatically or import into spreadsheets and databases.
Common Use Cases
- Cleaning OCR output that contains irregular spacing
- Standardizing text pasted from PDFs, emails, or web pages
- Preparing data for CSV import by normalizing column separators
- Tidying code or configuration files with inconsistent indentation
- Collapsing tab characters alongside spaces for uniform formatting
- Normalizing user-generated content before storing in a database
What Is Whitespace Normalization?
Whitespace normalization is the process of reducing irregular sequences of space characters into a consistent format. In digital text, whitespace includes regular spaces (U+0020), tabs (U+0009), non-breaking spaces (U+00A0), and various Unicode space characters. When text is copied from PDFs, OCR-scanned documents, rich-text editors, or HTML pages, extra spaces often creep in because the source formatting uses variable-width whitespace for visual alignment. Normalizing these irregular spaces into single spaces makes text cleaner, easier to read, and suitable for further processing — such as parsing into CSV columns, importing into databases, or feeding into search indexes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does this remove leading and trailing spaces?
This tool focuses on collapsing multiple consecutive spaces within each line into a single space. For trimming whitespace from the start and end of lines, use the “Trim Edges” tool available in the same Trim & Clean section.
What happens to tab characters?
When the “Collapse tabs together with spaces” option is enabled (on by default), tab characters are treated the same as spaces and collapsed along with them. Disable this option to leave tabs untouched.
Can I keep double spaces after punctuation?
Yes. Enable the “Keep two spaces after . ? !” option to preserve the traditional two-space convention after sentence-ending punctuation marks while still collapsing all other extra spaces.
Is my text sent to a server?
No. All processing happens locally in your browser. Your text is never transmitted or stored.
This tool processes your text entirely in your browser. No data is sent to any server, ensuring complete privacy for sensitive or confidential content.