Text Formatting Tools
Four tools for changing the shape of text rather than measuring it: what separates the values, how the letters are cased, and what the whole thing looks like when you are done.
Which one changes what
| Tool | Changes | Leaves alone |
|---|---|---|
| Delimiter converter | The characters between values | The values themselves |
| Case converter | Letter casing only | Length, order, punctuation |
| Slug generator | Case, accents, spacing, stop words | Word order |
| Find & replace | Anything you tell it to | Nothing — it is the general-purpose one |
Order of operations
- 1. Separator first. Split into one item per line. Everything else works line by line.
- 2. Case second. Normalise it before deduplicating, or Apple and apple both survive.
- 3. Content third. Bulk replacements, prefixes and suffixes once the set is final.
- 4. Rejoin last. Back into CSV, a SQL clause or a code array.
- Never the reverse. Re-splitting after a bulk edit usually means redoing the edit.
Picking a format
If the question is which separator to use rather than how to convert it, the format comparisons lay out the trade-offs — starting with CSV vs TSV.
Common formatting jobs
A spreadsheet column into a query
Copy the column, split on newline and join with commas, wrapping in single quotes. That is the SQL IN clause conversion, and it is one pass rather than three.
A headline into a URL
Fix the capitalisation with the case converter, then run it through the slug generator. The slug is usually several words shorter because stop words get dropped — check it against 60 characters with the character counter.
A messy export into something importable
Split it into lines, deduplicate, sort, then rejoin. The list clean-up guide has the full order and explains why doing it backwards silently produces the wrong result.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between formatting and converting text?
Converting changes the separator between values, such as comma to tab. Formatting changes the values themselves, such as their capitalisation or spacing. The delimiter converter does the first; the case converter and find and replace do the second.
Do these tools change my data or just how it looks?
Only what you ask for. The delimiter converter touches the separators and leaves values intact. The case converter changes letter case and nothing else, so the character count stays identical.
Which tool should I use for bulk edits?
Find and replace. It chains over 40 operations in one pass, including replace, strip HTML, trim whitespace, change case, sort and deduplicate.