diff --git a/octis/preprocessing/preprocessing.py b/octis/preprocessing/preprocessing.py
index 64ede3ee..1c7c6caf 100644
--- a/octis/preprocessing/preprocessing.py
+++ b/octis/preprocessing/preprocessing.py
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
+import re
 import string
 from typing import List, Union
-
 import spacy
 from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import TfidfVectorizer
 from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split
@@ -9,7 +9,6 @@
 from pathlib import Path
 from octis.dataset.dataset import Dataset
 from collections import Counter
-
 """
 Maps the language to its corresponding spacy model
 """
@@ -160,7 +159,7 @@ def preprocess_dataset(self, documents_path, labels_path=None, multilabel=False)
             # with Pool(self.num_processes) as p:
             #    docs = p.map(self.simple_preprocessing_steps, docs)
             chunksize = max(1, len(docs) // (self.num_processes * 20))
-            docs_list = process_map(self.simple_preprocessing_steps, docs, max_workers=self.num_processes, chunksize=chunksize)
+            docs = process_map(self.simple_preprocessing_steps, docs, max_workers=self.num_processes, chunksize=chunksize)
         else:
             docs = list(map(self.simple_preprocessing_steps, tqdm(docs)))
         if self.lowercase:
@@ -174,6 +173,12 @@ def preprocess_dataset(self, documents_path, labels_path=None, multilabel=False)
         print("created vocab")
         print(len(vocabulary))
         final_docs, final_labels, document_indexes = [], [], []
+
+        def valid_word_or_punc(word):
+            valid_word = len([rw for rw in re.findall(r"(?u)\b[\w|\-]{" + str(self.min_chars) + r",}\b", word) if rw in vocab]) > 0
+            all_punc = len(word) == len(re.findall(r'[^\w]',word))
+            return valid_word or all_punc
+
         if labels_path is not None:
             if multilabel:
                 labels = [
@@ -186,7 +191,8 @@ def preprocess_dataset(self, documents_path, labels_path=None, multilabel=False)
 
             vocab = set(vocabulary)
             for i, doc, label in zip(range(len(docs)), docs, labels):
-                new_doc = [w for w in doc.split() if w in vocab]
+                new_doc = [w for w in doc.split() if valid_word_or_punc(w)]
+
                 if len(new_doc) > self.min_doc_words:
                     final_docs.append(new_doc)
                     final_labels.append(label)
@@ -206,7 +212,7 @@ def preprocess_dataset(self, documents_path, labels_path=None, multilabel=False)
         else:
             vocab = set(vocabulary)
             for i, doc in enumerate(docs):
-                new_doc = [w for w in doc.split() if w in vocab]
+                new_doc = [w for w in doc.split() if valid_word_or_punc(w)]
                 if len(new_doc) > self.min_doc_words:
                     final_docs.append(new_doc)
                     document_indexes.append(i)
diff --git a/tests/test_datasets.py b/tests/test_datasets.py
index e451f8f6..569cfab0 100644
--- a/tests/test_datasets.py
+++ b/tests/test_datasets.py
@@ -54,7 +54,7 @@ def test_preprocessing_english_stops_split(data_dir):
 def test_preprocessing_multiprocess(data_dir):
     texts_path = data_dir+"/sample_texts/unprepr_docs.txt"
     p = Preprocessing(vocabulary=None, max_features=None, remove_punctuation=True,
-                      lemmatize=False,  num_processes=10, split=False,
+                      lemmatize=False, num_processes=10, split=False,
                       min_chars=2, min_words_docs=1)
     dataset = p.preprocess_dataset(
         documents_path=texts_path,
@@ -64,6 +64,31 @@ def test_preprocessing_multiprocess(data_dir):
     dataset.load_custom_dataset_from_folder(data_dir + "/sample_texts")
 
 
+def test_preprocessing_minimal(data_dir):
+    """
+    This test is checking to make sure preprocessing does not remove tokens which the user does not
+    specify should be removed.
+    """
+    texts_path = data_dir+"/sample_texts/unprepr_docs.txt"
+    p = Preprocessing(vocabulary=None, max_features=None, remove_punctuation=False,
+                      remove_numbers = False,
+                      lemmatize=False, split=False,
+                      min_chars=1, min_words_docs=0)
+    
+    unprocessed = [d.strip() for d in open(texts_path, "r").readlines() if len(d.strip()) > 0]
+    raw_word_lens = [len(d.split()) for d in unprocessed]
+
+    dataset = p.preprocess_dataset(
+        documents_path=texts_path,
+    )
+    print(dataset.get_corpus())
+    preprocessed_word_lens = [len(d) for d in dataset.get_corpus()]
+    print(list(zip(raw_word_lens,preprocessed_word_lens)))
+    assert len(raw_word_lens) == len(preprocessed_word_lens)
+    for i in range(len(preprocessed_word_lens)):
+        assert raw_word_lens[i] == preprocessed_word_lens[i]
+
+
 def test_load_20ng():
     data_home = get_data_home(data_home=None)
     cache_path = _pkl_filepath(data_home, "20NewsGroup" + ".pkz")