Remove Line Breaks
Text copied out of a PDF has a break at the end of every printed line. This joins those lines back into paragraphs — and, unlike a find-and-replace, it keeps the paragraph breaks that mean something.
How to use this tool
- 1Paste the text with the broken lines.
- 2Leave “Keep paragraphs” on — a blank line still starts a new paragraph.
- 3Switch to “Add line breaks” if you want the opposite job.
- 4Copy the fixed text.
Why find-and-replace makes it worse
Replacing every line break with a space works, and it also destroys every paragraph in the document. You end up with one solid block that has to be broken up by hand — which is more work than the problem you started with. Treating a blank line as a paragraph is the difference between a fix and a new problem.
Adding breaks instead
The opposite job comes up just as often: a wall of text that should be one sentence per line, for subtitling, for review, or for reading aloud. Switch the mode and set what to break after — a full stop for sentences, a comma for clauses.
Frequently asked questions
Why does text from a PDF break in the middle of sentences?
Because a PDF stores where each line of type sits on the page, not where the paragraphs are. Copying it gives you the printed lines, and a break at the end of each one. The paragraphs were never in the file to begin with.
How does it know where the paragraphs are?
A blank line. One break is treated as an accident of the layout and is joined up; a blank line between blocks is treated as a real paragraph and is kept. That is right for almost every PDF and email, and you can turn it off when it is not.
Will this fix hyphens split across lines?
No. A word broken as “infor-” and “mation” across two lines will come back as “infor- mation”. Search for “- ” afterwards and you will find them all in a few seconds.
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