diff --git a/Freedomain Video Uploader.ahk b/Freedomain Video Uploader.ahk
index ec15eae..d67eba6 100644
--- a/Freedomain Video Uploader.ahk	
+++ b/Freedomain Video Uploader.ahk	
@@ -1155,15 +1155,29 @@ JSVideoDescription := FormatTextToJSText(VideoDescription)
 ; -------------------------------/Log Info To Text-------------------------------
 
 
+; This should go somewhere appropriate
+; fwiw this function comes straight from the docs: https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/v2/Functions.htm#Variadic
+Join(sep, params*) {
+	For index, param in params
+		str .= param . sep
+	return SubStr(str, 1, -StrLen(sep))
+}
 
 
 ; Create an array out of the keywords to be used in different places
-VideoTags := StrReplace(VideoTags, ", ",",")
-VideoTags := StrReplace(VideoTags, " ,",",")
-VideoTags := StrReplace(VideoTags, " ",",")
-
-KeywordsArray := StrSplit(VideoTags,",") 
-
+KeywordsArray := Array()
+For idx, val in StrSplit(VideoTags, ",") {
+	; for each element in the split videotags array, trim leading & trailing spaces
+	val := Trim(val)
+	; and remove any chars that are not a letter, number, or space (i = case-insensitive)
+	; note: it would be better to replace accented chars w/ their pure latin equivalents but that seems a bit
+	; beyond the scope of this change. here's a link talking about how to do that tho
+	; https://www.autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=61626
+	val := RegexReplace(val, "i)[^a-z0-9 ]", "")
+	KeywordsArray.InsertAt(idx, val)
+}
+; update VideoTags with sanitized keywords list
+VideoTags := Join(",", KeywordsArray*)
 
 ; Call each sub one by one, if errors occur then an upload will be stopped and the next upload will then proceed