AI text cleaner: remove em dashes, curly quotes and hidden characters

Paste text from ChatGPT, Claude or any AI writer. The cleaner swaps em dashes for commas, straightens quotes, removes zero-width characters and stray markdown, and points out phrases like delve so you can rewrite them yourself.

Clean up

Nothing to clean yet.

Runs in your browser. Your text stays on this device until you click Schedule this.

Use this tool from code

The same tool is a free API call, no account needed. It also works with our 9 SDKs and the MCP server.

curl
curl -X POST https://postboost.co/app/api/tools/ai-text-cleaner -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"text":"Fast — reliable… and “simple”."}'

API docs for this tool SDK quickstart

Last verified:

What the cleaner changes

AI writers leave the same marks in almost every draft: long em dashes, curly quotes and apostrophes, the single ellipsis character, double spaces, and markdown markers such as **bold** that social networks show as plain asterisks. Some text also carries characters you cannot see, like zero-width spaces and soft hyphens. Each clean-up has its own switch, and the summary under the result tells you how many of each it changed.

What it leaves alone

Your words. The cleaner never rewrites a sentence. Number ranges keep a hyphen, emoji keep their joiners, and code-like words such as snake_case names stay as they are. Phrases that often show up in AI drafts, like delve, game-changer or it's important to note, are listed under the result. Rewrite them in your own voice, or keep them if they are what you mean.

Before you post

Clean text is only the first step. Check the length with the character counter, since every network counts differently, and break long posts into a thread if you need to. When the post is ready, click Schedule this above to open it as a draft in PostBoost and schedule it to all your networks at once.

How to use

  1. Paste your text into the box.
  2. Pick what replaces an em dash: a comma, a spaced hyphen, a hyphen, or keep it.
  3. Untick any clean-up you do not want, for example curly quotes.
  4. Read the flagged phrases and rewrite them in your own words.
  5. Copy the clean text and paste it into your post.

FAQ

How do I remove em dashes from AI text?

Paste the text and keep Em dashes to a comma selected. A dash between two words becomes a comma, a dash in a number range such as 2020–2024 becomes a hyphen, and a dash after a full stop or question mark becomes a hyphen so you never get a comma after punctuation.

What are invisible characters and why remove them?

Zero-width spaces, word joiners, byte order marks and soft hyphens take up no space on screen but are still in the text. They can break search, hashtags and links, and they count toward some character limits. The cleaner removes them and turns non-breaking and thin spaces into normal spaces. Joiners inside emoji are kept so family and flag emoji stay intact.

Does the cleaner rewrite my text?

No. It only changes punctuation, spacing and formatting marks. Phrases such as delve or in today's fast-paced world are listed for you to rewrite; their words are never changed.

Will this make AI text undetectable?

No, and it is not built for that. It removes typographic habits and lists stock phrases. Whether text reads as human depends on what it says, so rewrite the flagged parts and add your own examples.

Why do AI tools add asterisks and underscores?

Chat tools write markdown, where **two asterisks** mean bold and _underscores_ mean italic. Social networks show those marks as plain characters. The cleaner strips the markers and keeps the words, and it leaves snake_case names and maths like 2*3 alone.

Is my text sent anywhere?

Not unless you click Schedule this. The cleaner runs in your browser. Schedule this sends the cleaned text to PostBoost to open it as a draft in your account.

Related

Try PostBoost free

API, webhooks and MCP on every plan, including Free. No credit card required.