Why does pasted Word text look wrong? Microsoft Word and Google Docs quietly embed smart quotes (" "), em dashes (—), non-breaking spaces, and invisible Unicode characters that cause layout bugs, CMS errors, and garbled emails. Paste below and PasteLint removes all of it instantly — Basic Clean + Remove Hidden Characters are pre-selected for you.
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Why Word Copy-Paste Breaks Your Formatting
Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and LibreOffice all use typographic characters that look fine in a word processor but cause chaos elsewhere. Smart quotes (" ") get rendered as “ in raw HTML. Em dashes (—) appear as strange boxes in some editors. Non-breaking spaces ( ) prevent text from wrapping correctly and can break search indexing. PasteLint catches and fixes all of these in one click.
Working with a CMS like WordPress, Webflow, or HubSpot? Paste into PasteLint first to avoid encoding artifacts. Copying into a code editor or database field? The hidden characters Word inserts will cause validation errors until you strip them out.
Common Word Copy-Paste Problems PasteLint Fixes
- Smart quotes and curly apostrophes replaced with straight ones
- Em dashes and en dashes normalized to hyphens
- Non-breaking spaces and zero-width spaces removed
- Trailing spaces and inconsistent line breaks cleaned up
- Invisible Unicode and byte-order marks stripped
- Multiple consecutive blank lines collapsed to single breaks