What is a non-breaking space and why does it matter?

It's a Unicode space character (U+00A0) that looks identical to a normal space but behaves differently — some tools don't count it as whitespace for word-splitting, search, or replace purposes. It commonly ends up in text pasted from Word, Google Docs, or web pages via autoformatting. This tool converts it to a regular space so downstream counting and search tools behave as expected.

Will this remove intentional double spaces after periods?

Yes, by design — the tool collapses any run of multiple spaces to one, regardless of where they occur. If your specific style guide or publication requires the older two-spaces-after-a-period convention, don't run the text through this tool, or add the extra space back manually afterward.

Does this fix spacing inside a table or code block?

No — it's built for prose. Multi-space alignment in a plain-text table or preformatted code block will be collapsed along with genuine accidental extra spaces, which will break the alignment. Don't run tabular or code content through this tool.

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Remove Extra Spaces

Collapses double spaces and trims stray whitespace — including the hidden non-breaking-space gotcha.

This tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type or paste here is ever sent to a server — see how the calculations work.

This collapses any run of multiple spaces down to a single space, and trims leading/trailing whitespace from each line. It's a small fix but a common one: text typed by two-space-after-period typists (a once-standard typewriter convention that most modern style guides, including AP and Chicago, have since moved away from in favor of a single space), or text pasted from a source with inconsistent spacing, ends up with visible extra gaps that look sloppy in final copy.

Cleaned-up text appears here as you type.

What actually gets cleaned, including the invisible character

Any run of two or more regular space characters in a row is collapsed to one. Leading and trailing whitespace on each line is trimmed, and (as an option) leading/trailing blank lines at the start and end of the whole document are trimmed too.

The less obvious fix this tool applies: pasted text — especially from Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or web pages — very often contains a non-breaking space (Unicode character U+00A0) instead of a regular space, typically inserted automatically around certain punctuation or by "smart" autoformatting. A non-breaking space looks visually identical to a normal space but is a different character under the hood, and it can cause subtle bugs: some word counters and search/replace tools don't recognize it as whitespace, so a phrase with a non-breaking space in it might not match a search you'd expect to find it, or a word count might come out different than expected. This tool normalizes non-breaking spaces to regular spaces as part of the cleanup.

Tabs are also normalized — converted to a single space by default, since a stray tab character copied from a spreadsheet or code editor often isn't intentional in prose text (if you're working with tab-separated data specifically, this tool isn't the right one — use it only on prose).

Who uses this

Cleaning up double-spaced-after-period text before pasting into a modern single-space-convention publication.
Fixing inconsistent spacing in text pasted from multiple sources (email threads, chat exports, old documents) before combining them.
Resolving a mysterious search-and-replace or word-count discrepancy that turns out to be caused by hidden non-breaking spaces.

Edge cases to know about

This tool does not touch line breaks — it only affects the horizontal whitespace within a line. Use /remove-line-breaks/ or /remove-empty-lines/ for line-level cleanup; this tool and those are meant to be used together on messy pasted text, not as substitutes for each other.
Code or data that intentionally uses multiple spaces for alignment (like a fixed-width table typed in plain text) will have that alignment destroyed by space-collapsing — this tool is meant for prose, not preformatted/monospace-aligned content.
If your text needs a non-breaking space to remain (for instance, deliberately preventing a line break between "10" and "km" in a specific rendering context), running it through this tool will remove that intentional behavior along with the accidental ones, since the tool can't distinguish intentional from accidental non-breaking spaces.

Related tools

FAQ

What is a non-breaking space and why does it matter?: It's a Unicode space character (U+00A0) that looks identical to a normal space but behaves differently — some tools don't count it as whitespace for word-splitting, search, or replace purposes. It commonly ends up in text pasted from Word, Google Docs, or web pages via autoformatting. This tool converts it to a regular space so downstream counting and search tools behave as expected.
Will this remove intentional double spaces after periods?: Yes, by design — the tool collapses any run of multiple spaces to one, regardless of where they occur. If your specific style guide or publication requires the older two-spaces-after-a-period convention, don't run the text through this tool, or add the extra space back manually afterward.
Does this fix spacing inside a table or code block?: No — it's built for prose. Multi-space alignment in a plain-text table or preformatted code block will be collapsed along with genuine accidental extra spaces, which will break the alignment. Don't run tabular or code content through this tool.