Workshop › Text detective › Step 8 of 13

Drop the punctuation

What we are doing

mat. and mat should be the same word. We remove punctuation from each word before counting it.

```js
const key = word.toLowerCase().replace(/[.,!?;:]/g, '')
```

What it means

• replace(pattern, '') replaces what matches the pattern with nothing, deleting it.
• [.,!?;:] matches any one of those characters; g means every match, not just the first.

Your turn

Add .replace(/[.,!?;:]/g, '') to the key line.

Skills: Types and values

← Count each word The most common word →

All steps

1. Read the text
2. Count the characters
3. Update as you type
4. Split into words
5. The extra-space trap
6. An empty box has no words
7. Count each word
8. Drop the punctuation
9. The most common word
10. Shift a letter
11. Encode a whole text
12. The secret line
13. Build it yourself: crack the code