Why prefer hyphens over underscores in a URL?

Search engines treat a hyphen as a word break, so best-pizza-recipe reads as three words. An underscore is often read as joining them into a single token, which is why hyphens are the long-standing recommendation for public pages.

What happens to accented letters like é or ñ?

The accent marks are stripped, so é becomes e and ñ becomes n. A few letters are spelled out instead: ß becomes ss, æ becomes ae, ø becomes o and ł becomes l. Scripts with no Latin equivalent, such as Japanese or Cyrillic, are dropped, and you will see a note that nothing could be kept.

Why did a stop word survive in my slug?

The list holds 37 common English words such as a, the, of and for, and it matches whatever the capitalization. A word that is not on the list, like your or how, stays in the slug, so trim those by hand.

How are apostrophes handled?

Straight and curly apostrophes are removed without splitting the word, so don't becomes dont and it's becomes its. Every other run of punctuation or spaces becomes exactly one separator.

Are separators at the start or end kept?

No. Leading and trailing punctuation is discarded, so a title wrapped in quotes or ending in an exclamation mark never produces a slug that starts or ends with a hyphen, dot or underscore.

Is there a length limit?

The tool does not cut the slug. Shorter addresses are easier to read and share, so trim long titles yourself or use the stop word switch.

Generator toolsInstantPrivateNo account

Slug Generator

Turns a title or phrase into a URL-safe slug: ASCII letters and digits joined by the separator you pick, with accents removed and punctuation dropped.

Back to category

About Slug Generator

Turns a title or phrase into a URL-safe slug: ASCII letters and digits joined by the separator you pick, with accents removed and punctuation dropped. It suits anyone naming blog posts, product pages, CMS entries or files who wants clean, predictable addresses.

How to use it

Type or paste your title into the Text to Convert box.
Leave Convert to lowercase on for the usual URL style, or turn it off to keep the capitals you typed.
Turn on Remove stop words (a, the, and, etc.) if you want a shorter slug with filler words dropped.
Choose Hyphen, Underscore, Dot or None from the Separator menu. Hyphen is the default and the safest choice for web addresses.
Select Generate Slug, then use Copy beside the Generated Slug field.

A headline with an accent, digits and punctuation

Input

The Café Guide: 10 Tips & Tricks for Beginners!

Output

Hyphen: the-cafe-guide-10-tips-tricks-for-beginners
Underscore: the_cafe_guide_10_tips_tricks_for_beginners
Dot: the.cafe.guide.10.tips.tricks.for.beginners
None: thecafeguide10tipstricksforbeginners
Hyphen with Remove stop words on: cafe-guide-10-tips-tricks-beginners

When to use it

Creating the URL path for a new article before you publish it in a CMS.
Building consistent handles for products or categories imported from a spreadsheet, one title at a time.
Naming exported files so they sort cleanly and never contain spaces or symbols.
Producing anchor IDs for headings on a documentation page.

Questions about Slug Generator

Why prefer hyphens over underscores in a URL?: Search engines treat a hyphen as a word break, so best-pizza-recipe reads as three words. An underscore is often read as joining them into a single token, which is why hyphens are the long-standing recommendation for public pages.
What happens to accented letters like é or ñ?: The accent marks are stripped, so é becomes e and ñ becomes n. A few letters are spelled out instead: ß becomes ss, æ becomes ae, ø becomes o and ł becomes l. Scripts with no Latin equivalent, such as Japanese or Cyrillic, are dropped, and you will see a note that nothing could be kept.
Why did a stop word survive in my slug?: The list holds 37 common English words such as a, the, of and for, and it matches whatever the capitalization. A word that is not on the list, like your or how, stays in the slug, so trim those by hand.
How are apostrophes handled?: Straight and curly apostrophes are removed without splitting the word, so don't becomes dont and it's becomes its. Every other run of punctuation or spaces becomes exactly one separator.
Are separators at the start or end kept?: No. Leading and trailing punctuation is discarded, so a title wrapped in quotes or ending in an exclamation mark never produces a slug that starts or ends with a hyphen, dot or underscore.
Is there a length limit?: The tool does not cut the slug. Shorter addresses are easier to read and share, so trim long titles yourself or use the stop word switch.

Related tools

Generator toolsInstantPrivateNo account

Slug Generator

Turns a title or phrase into a URL-safe slug: ASCII letters and digits joined by the separator you pick, with accents removed and punctuation dropped.

Back to category

WorkbenchClient-side · Private

Text to Convert

Slug Options

Convert to lowercase

Remove stop words (a, the, and, etc.)

Separator

About Slug Generator

How to use it

Type or paste your title into the Text to Convert box.
Leave Convert to lowercase on for the usual URL style, or turn it off to keep the capitals you typed.
Turn on Remove stop words (a, the, and, etc.) if you want a shorter slug with filler words dropped.
Choose Hyphen, Underscore, Dot or None from the Separator menu. Hyphen is the default and the safest choice for web addresses.
Select Generate Slug, then use Copy beside the Generated Slug field.

A headline with an accent, digits and punctuation

Input

The Café Guide: 10 Tips & Tricks for Beginners!

Output

Hyphen: the-cafe-guide-10-tips-tricks-for-beginners
Underscore: the_cafe_guide_10_tips_tricks_for_beginners
Dot: the.cafe.guide.10.tips.tricks.for.beginners
None: thecafeguide10tipstricksforbeginners
Hyphen with Remove stop words on: cafe-guide-10-tips-tricks-beginners

When to use it

Creating the URL path for a new article before you publish it in a CMS.
Building consistent handles for products or categories imported from a spreadsheet, one title at a time.
Naming exported files so they sort cleanly and never contain spaces or symbols.
Producing anchor IDs for headings on a documentation page.

Questions about Slug Generator

Why prefer hyphens over underscores in a URL?: Search engines treat a hyphen as a word break, so best-pizza-recipe reads as three words. An underscore is often read as joining them into a single token, which is why hyphens are the long-standing recommendation for public pages.
What happens to accented letters like é or ñ?: The accent marks are stripped, so é becomes e and ñ becomes n. A few letters are spelled out instead: ß becomes ss, æ becomes ae, ø becomes o and ł becomes l. Scripts with no Latin equivalent, such as Japanese or Cyrillic, are dropped, and you will see a note that nothing could be kept.
Why did a stop word survive in my slug?: The list holds 37 common English words such as a, the, of and for, and it matches whatever the capitalization. A word that is not on the list, like your or how, stays in the slug, so trim those by hand.
How are apostrophes handled?: Straight and curly apostrophes are removed without splitting the word, so don't becomes dont and it's becomes its. Every other run of punctuation or spaces becomes exactly one separator.
Are separators at the start or end kept?: No. Leading and trailing punctuation is discarded, so a title wrapped in quotes or ending in an exclamation mark never produces a slug that starts or ends with a hyphen, dot or underscore.
Is there a length limit?: The tool does not cut the slug. Shorter addresses are easier to read and share, so trim long titles yourself or use the stop word switch.

Search tools

Slug Generator

About Slug Generator

How to use it

A headline with an accent, digits and punctuation

When to use it

Questions about Slug Generator

Why prefer hyphens over underscores in a URL?

What happens to accented letters like é or ñ?

Why did a stop word survive in my slug?

How are apostrophes handled?

Are separators at the start or end kept?

Is there a length limit?

Related tools

Slug Generator

About Slug Generator

How to use it

A headline with an accent, digits and punctuation

When to use it

Questions about Slug Generator

Why prefer hyphens over underscores in a URL?

What happens to accented letters like é or ñ?

Why did a stop word survive in my slug?

How are apostrophes handled?

Are separators at the start or end kept?

Is there a length limit?

Related tools