[Python] .replace() in Python not replacing punctuation with whitespace as planned [closed]

I have a text file from which I have to clean out all the punctuation and replace it with whitespace, but for words such as "leaf-shaped" (compound words with hyphen), it is not working. I don't know what I might be doing wrong.

punc_variable = punc_variable.replace("’", " ")
punc_variable = punc_variable.replace("‘", " ")
punc_variable = punc_variable.replace("…", " ")
punc_variable = punc_variable.replace("–", " ")
punc_variable = punc_variable.replace("“", " ")
punc_variable = punc_variable.replace("”", " ")
punc_variable = punc_variable.replace("-", " ")
punc_variable = punc_variable.lower()

Continue reading...