Remove Line Breaks

Paste your text, choose what replaces each break, then press Copy the clean text.

Remove Line Breaks

Sample text. Type or paste to replace it.

Clean text 178 characters

Do not open the box. It was sent to the wrong address, and the label is in a language nobody here can read. If it starts to hum, move it to the hallway and carry on as nor- mal.

Removed 4 line breaks (4 LF). Kept 1 paragraph break.

178 characters in, 178 out. 1 word may still be split at a hyphen: see More options.

  • 6 × Line feed (LF)
Settings
Replace each break with
More options hyphens, show breaks

For a word split at a line end. A real compound loses its hyphen too, so read the result.

Takes out the invisible hyphen hints that a web page or a PDF can leave in a text.

Draws your text with a symbol in place of every break.

Next step Put breaks in on purposeFix the capitals next

How it works

This tool joins up text that breaks in the wrong places. It can remove line breaks yet keep your paragraphs. It finds all 8 kinds of line break that Unicode defines. A word split by a hyphen still needs your eye.

Read the full guide

Paste, pick a replacement, copy

The box opens on a sample, so press Clear, then paste. The result fills the Clean text box as you go. Keep paragraphs starts on: a blank line stays one blank line, and every single break inside a paragraph goes. Then choose what replaces each break: a space, nothing, a comma and a space, or up to ten characters typed into Your own. Press Copy the clean text to take the result. The counter under the clean text names what it removed, such as 10 LF and 2 CR.

Match the settings to where the text is going

Text copied from an email or a PDF is usually hard wrapped: every line you saw ends in a real break. For prose, keep paragraphs and replace with a space. For a column of names that must become one line, switch Keep paragraphs off and use a comma and a space.

Hyphens, saved settings and the next step

Rejoin hyphenated words starts off. Switched on, it joins a word split at a line end, so nor- mal becomes normal. It cannot tell a split word from a real compound, so well-known at a line end becomes wellknown. Your settings stay in this browser, never the text you pasted. Share these settings makes a link to them: a computer copies it, a phone opens its share sheet. If the capitals are wrong too, the case converter is the next stop.

Tips
  • A break survived another cleaner? Paste here and look for Line tabulation (VT) in the counter. Show breaks draws where it sat.
  • A poem, a lyric or a postal address needs its breaks. To fit an address on one line, use a comma and a space.
  • In a spreadsheet, the usual formula swaps character 10, Line feed (LF), for a space. Carriage return (CR) is character 13 and needs another pass.

Questions and answers

How does it remove line breaks and keep the paragraphs?

It sorts every break into two piles. A single break sits inside a paragraph, so it is replaced. Two or more in a row mark a new paragraph and become one blank line. A Paragraph separator (PS) is always a paragraph break.

Why is a line break sometimes two characters?

Blame the teleprinter. A carriage return sent the print head back to the first column, and a line feed rolled the paper up one line. Windows kept both characters, Unix kept only the line feed, and the classic Mac kept only the return.

Why did removing the breaks glue two words together?

The replacement was probably set to Nothing. A hard-wrapped line usually ends without a space, because the break was doing that job. Press A space and the words stay apart.

Can I put the line breaks back afterwards?

No. Once a break has become a space, nothing in the text records where it was. The pasted text stays in the Your text box while you work, and changing a setting reruns the job from that original.

What are the 8 kinds of line break?

The Unicode Standard lists eight newline functions: Line feed, Carriage return, the two together, Next line, Line tabulation, Form feed, Line separator and Paragraph separator. The first three are the everyday ones, and the other five are what simple cleaners miss.

More tools

Browse Text styles

All 8 kinds of line break

Everyday line ends 3

  • Carriage return (CR) U+000D. Alone, it was the line end of Mac OS 9 and earlier and of several 1980s home computers. Today it is mostly met as the first half of CR LF. Code writes it as \r. Line break class CR.
  • Carriage return and line feed (CR LF) U+000D U+000A. Two characters that count as one break. The line end on Windows, and the one that email and most text-based internet protocols require. A tool that removes only LF leaves a stray CR in every line.
  • Line feed (LF) U+000A. The line end on Unix, Linux and current macOS. Code writes it as \n. Line break class LF.
Show all 8 kinds of line break (5 more)

Rare and hidden breaks 5

  • Form feed (FF) U+000C. Commonly used as a page separator in plain text. The Unicode Standard says it does not interrupt a paragraph, so it is removed as a line break and never kept as a paragraph break. Line break class BK.
  • Line separator (LS) U+2028. Unicode's own line break, made so that a new line could be stored without the CR and LF muddle. Much software ignores it, but JavaScript counts it as the end of a line, so it can split text that looks whole. Line break class BK.
  • Line tabulation (VT) U+000B. Better known as vertical tab. The Unicode Standard notes that one widely used word processor stores a line break inside a paragraph as this character, so it arrives in text pasted from documents. Line break class BK.
  • Next line (NEL) U+0085. The line end of EBCDIC mainframe text once it is converted to Unicode. Much software does not treat it as a line break at all, which is how it slips through other cleaners. Line break class NL.
  • Paragraph separator (PS) U+2029. Unicode's own paragraph break, and the only one of the eight that means a new paragraph by itself. With Keep paragraphs on it becomes a blank line and stays. Line break class BK.

How this list was compiled: The eight entries are the eight newline functions in Table 5-1 of the Unicode Standard, version 18.0.0, section 5.8, Newline Guidelines (https://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode18.0.0/core-spec/chapter-5/): CR, LF, CRLF, NEL, VT, FF, LS and PS. The platform notes follow Table 5-2 of the same section, and the list of systems in the Wikipedia article on the newline (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline), which also records that most text-based internet protocols require CR LF and that JavaScript treats LS and PS as line ends. A scratch script built the file and checked every entry against three files of the Unicode Character Database, version 18.0.0: the control code names and abbreviations in https://www.unicode.org/Public/18.0.0/ucd/NameAliases.txt, the names and categories in https://www.unicode.org/Public/18.0.0/ucd/UnicodeData.txt, and the line break classes in https://www.unicode.org/Public/18.0.0/ucd/LineBreak.txt. Unicode Standard Annex 14, revision 57 (https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr14/), gives the classes BK, CR, LF and NL a mandatory break and says that only the paragraph separator defines a paragraph break. The samples are the Control Pictures U+240A to U+240D. NEL, LS and PS have no picture of their own, so they borrow U+2424 (symbol for newline), U+21B5 (an arrow that NamesList.txt says may indicate a new line) and U+00B6 (the paragraph sign). Everything was checked on 2026-09-19. Characters that only allow a line to wrap, such as the soft hyphen and the zero width space, are not line breaks and are not in the list. Licence: own work