Two kinds of line break
One is a paragraph. The other is where a PDF, an email client or an old text file wrapped the line at a fixed width. They look the same and mean opposite things, which is why removing all of them turns a document into one enormous block.
Keeping paragraph breaks — blank lines — while joining the wraps inside them is what you almost always want. Text pasted from a PDF, where every line ends at column 72, becomes readable prose again.
Hyphens at the end of a line
A PDF that hyphenated words at the line break leaves informa- and tion on separate lines. Joining them naively gives informa- tion. Watch for it in the result, particularly in anything typeset in two columns.
Windows, Mac and Unix
Three conventions exist: \r\n, \n and, historically, \r. Mixing them is what produces text that looks single-spaced in one editor and double-spaced in another. All three are handled here and the output is consistent.
Frequently asked questions
How do I keep my paragraphs?
Use the option that preserves blank lines. It joins the wrapped lines inside each paragraph and leaves the breaks between them.
Why does my text from a PDF look broken up?
A PDF stores lines, not paragraphs — every visual line ends with a break. Joining them restores the prose.
What about hyphenated words split across lines?
They rejoin with the hyphen still in the middle. Worth scanning the result, especially with two-column PDFs.
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