Fix text copied from a PDF

Paste a passage and get it back readable — words rejoined, line breaks removed, ligatures repaired. It is cleaned in this browser tab and never uploaded.

Why copied PDF text arrives broken

A web page reflows: change the window width and the text re-wraps, so a word is never committed to being in two places. A PDF is a description of ink on a fixed page. Its line breaks were decided once, when the document was typeset, and they are stored in the file. Copy a paragraph and you get the page's layout along with the words.

The harder problem is hyphenation. When a long word will not fit, the typesetter cuts it in half. We measured 60 recent arXiv papers and found 78% contained at least one word split this way, with roughly half of all line-ending hyphens being genuine compounds. That is why this tool shows you every word it rejoined rather than fixing them silently.

How to use it

1. Copy the passage from your PDF. Select the text in any PDF reader and copy it as normal. It will arrive carrying the page's line breaks.
2. Paste it into the box. The text is cleaned in your browser as you paste. Nothing is uploaded and there is no server to upload it to.
3. Check the rejoined words. Every word put back together is listed underneath, because a hyphen at the end of a line is genuinely ambiguous and worth a glance.
4. Copy the cleaned text. Paste it into your notes, a document, or wherever you were sending it.

Frequently asked questions

Why does text copied from a PDF have line breaks everywhere?

Because a PDF describes a fixed page rather than flowing text. The line breaks you see were decided when the document was typeset and are stored in the file, so copying brings them along. A web page reflows and has no such breaks to carry.

Why are words split in half with a hyphen?

When a long word does not fit on a line, the typesetter hyphenates it and the halves land on separate lines. The file genuinely contains the fragments. We measured 60 recent arXiv papers and found this in 78% of them.

How do you know whether to keep a hyphen?

Nothing in the text distinguishes a word split for the page from a real compound like well-known, and in our measurement the split was almost exactly even. The hyphen is kept for prefixes that rarely form single words and dropped otherwise, and every rejoined word is listed so you can check.

Is my text uploaded anywhere?

No. The cleaning happens in your browser. There is no upload endpoint in this tool, so there is nothing for a server to receive, and closing the tab discards it.

What is a ligature and why does it break search?

Typesetters join certain letter pairs into a single glyph, so fi becomes fi as one character. Searching a document for 'find' then fails to match 'find', and pasted text carries the same problem. This tool converts them back.