diff --git a/common/static/lib/js/tag-input.js b/common/static/lib/js/tag-input.js
index dfea1edf..8070df31 100644
--- a/common/static/lib/js/tag-input.js
+++ b/common/static/lib/js/tag-input.js
@@ -114,7 +114,7 @@ function inputTags(configs) {
                 tags_arr = [];
 
             for (let i = 0; i < tags.length; i++) {
-                tags_arr.push(tags[i].textContent.toLowerCase());
+                tags_arr.push(tags[i].textContent.replace(/\s+/g, ' ').trim());
             }
             this.tags_array = tags_arr;
 
@@ -143,4 +143,4 @@ function inputTags(configs) {
 
     _privateMethods.init(configs);
     // return false;
-}
\ No newline at end of file
+}
diff --git a/journal/models.py b/journal/models.py
index 1636ed86..af1e4d1f 100644
--- a/journal/models.py
+++ b/journal/models.py
@@ -963,10 +963,14 @@ class Tag(List):
 
     @staticmethod
     def cleanup_title(title, replace=True):
-        t = title.strip().lower()
-        # t = re.sub(r"\W", "_", title.strip().lower())
+        t = re.sub(r"\s+", " ", title.strip())
         return "_" if not title and replace else t
 
+    @staticmethod
+    def deep_cleanup_title(title):
+        """Remove all non-word characters, only for public index purpose"""
+        return re.sub(r"\W+", " ", title).strip()
+
 
 class TagManager:
     @staticmethod
@@ -978,7 +982,10 @@ class TagManager:
             .annotate(frequency=Count("owner"))
             .order_by("-frequency")[:20]
         )
-        return sorted(list(map(lambda t: t["title"], tags)))
+        tag_titles = [
+            t for t in set(map(lambda t: Tag.deep_cleanup_title(t["title"]), tags)) if t
+        ]
+        return tag_titles
 
     @staticmethod
     def all_tags_for_user(user, public_only=False):