What happens to words that aren't wrapped?

They're left completely unchanged. The tool only strips the symbol from words that actually start and/or end with it; words without it pass through as-is.

What if the symbol appears more than once at the edge of a word?

It's stripped repeatedly from each side until no more occurrences remain at that edge, so "**hello**" with symbol "*" fully unwraps to "hello".

Is this a true inverse of the Word Symbol Wrapper tool?

Yes, for text produced by that tool with the same symbol, running it through this tool recovers the original words, as long as the original text didn't already contain that symbol at a word's edge.

Word Symbol Unwrapper - Strip a Symbol From Every Word

Overview

Introduction

Text wrapped with a symbol around each word, like Markdown emphasis markers or a custom tag, sometimes needs to be cleaned back to plain words.

This tool reverses that wrapping automatically across your whole input.

What Is Word Symbol Unwrapper?

An unwrapping tool that finds every word in your text and strips your chosen symbol from its start and end, if present, leaving unwrapped words untouched.

It runs entirely client-side as part of this site's String Tools collection, so nothing you paste is ever uploaded to a server.

How Word Symbol Unwrapper Works

The tool finds every run of non-whitespace characters, then repeatedly removes the chosen symbol from the start and from the end of each one until it no longer appears at either edge.

The transformation happens synchronously in JavaScript the moment you type, with no network round trip involved.

When To Use Word Symbol Unwrapper

Use it to strip Markdown emphasis markers back to plain text, or to remove a custom tag or marker that was wrapped around every word.

It's a fast way to get the answer without opening a code editor, a REPL, or writing a one-off script just to check.

Often used alongside Word Symbol Wrapper, Letter Symbol Wrapper and Whitespace Trimmer.

Features

Advantages

Works with any symbol string, matching whatever the Word Symbol Wrapper tool (or another source) used.
Only strips the symbol from word edges, leaving the symbol untouched if it appears in the middle of a word.

Limitations

Assumes the symbol only marks wrapping at word edges; a symbol that legitimately appears in the middle of a word is left as-is, which is usually the desired behavior.

Examples

Removing asterisk wrapping

Input

*hello* *world*

Output

hello world

The leading and trailing "*" is stripped from each word, leaving the plain words and original spacing.

Best Practices & Notes

Best Practices

Use the exact same symbol string that was used to wrap the text, or the unwrap won't recognize it.
Run this before further text processing if wrapped words would otherwise interfere with word-counting or search tools.

Developer Notes

Each word is unwrapped with two while loops (while (word.startsWith(symbol)) ... and the mirrored endsWith() loop) rather than a single regex, which correctly handles a symbol repeated multiple times at the same edge, like "**bold**".

Word Symbol Unwrapper Use Cases

Reversing Markdown emphasis or bold wrapping back to plain words
Cleaning up text exported with a custom word-tagging marker
Undoing output from the Word Symbol Wrapper tool

Common Mistakes

Using a different symbol than the one the text was originally wrapped with, which leaves the wrapping in place.
Expecting a symbol in the middle of a word (not at an edge) to be removed; only edge occurrences are stripped.

Tips

If you're not sure what symbol was used, check a couple of wrapped words in the input first to confirm it before running the tool.

Word Symbol Unwrapper