diff --git a/text/cleaners.py b/text/cleaners.py
index e2e35c1a8..7d85f9daf 100755
--- a/text/cleaners.py
+++ b/text/cleaners.py
@@ -17,8 +17,10 @@
 from .numbers import normalize_numbers
 
 
-# Regular expression matching whitespace:
+# Regular expression matching whitespace punctuation, dash:
 _whitespace_re = re.compile(r'\s+')
+_punctuation_re = re.compile(r'[()!@#$%^&*+?/,.;\"\'\[\]]')
+_dash_re = re.compile(r'[-]')
 
 # List of (regular expression, replacement) pairs for abbreviations:
 _abbreviations = [(re.compile('\\b%s\\.' % x[0], re.IGNORECASE), x[1]) for x in [
@@ -65,6 +67,14 @@ def convert_to_ascii(text):
   return unidecode(text)
 
 
+def replace_dash(text):
+  return re.sub(_dash_re, '', text)
+
+
+def collapse_punctuation(text):
+  return re.sub(_punctuation_re, '', text)
+
+
 def basic_cleaners(text):
   '''Basic pipeline that lowercases and collapses whitespace without transliteration.'''
   text = lowercase(text)
@@ -87,4 +97,6 @@ def english_cleaners(text):
   text = expand_numbers(text)
   text = expand_abbreviations(text)
   text = collapse_whitespace(text)
+  text = collapse_punctuation(text)
+  text = replace_dash(text)
   return text