import re lines = [line.rstrip('\n').replace('...','.') for line in open("wiki.txt", "r")] multilist = [] for line in lines: n = line.find(':') if n != -1: l = "".join(line[:n].split()) ts = re.split(r'([\.\?!\[\]]+)', line[n+1:]) si = iter(ts) tt = [c+next(si, '') for c in si] multilist += [(l + ' -- ' + ('[' + t.lstrip(' ') if t[-1] == ']' else t.lstrip(' ')) + ' (noisy)') for t in tt if t.strip(' ') != '[' and t.strip(' ') != ''] print(multilist) with open('fixed.txt', 'w') as f: for item in multilist: f.write("%s\n" % item)