diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 0158bd8..b5abbac 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -5,7 +5,6 @@ whitenoise[brotli]==6.4.0
 Pygments==2.14.0
 beautifulsoup4==4.9.3
 lxml==4.9.1
-more-itertools==9.0.0
 requests==2.28.1
 wagtail-generic-chooser==0.5
 django-rq==2.7.0
diff --git a/website/common/utils.py b/website/common/utils.py
index b702bdf..e6789ab 100644
--- a/website/common/utils.py
+++ b/website/common/utils.py
@@ -1,13 +1,12 @@
 from dataclasses import dataclass
 from itertools import islice, pairwise
-from typing import Type
+from typing import Iterable, Type
 
 from bs4 import BeautifulSoup, SoupStrainer
 from django.conf import settings
 from django.http.request import HttpRequest
-from django.utils.text import slugify, smart_split
+from django.utils.text import re_words, slugify
 from django_cache_decorator import django_cache_decorator
-from more_itertools import ilen
 from wagtail.models import Page, Site
 from wagtail.models import get_page_models as get_wagtail_page_models
 
@@ -66,11 +65,17 @@ def show_toolbar_callback(request: HttpRequest) -> bool:
     return settings.DEBUG
 
 
+def split_words(text: str) -> Iterable[str]:
+    for word in re_words.split(text):
+        if word and word.strip():
+            yield word.strip()
+
+
 def count_words(text: str) -> int:
     """
     Count the number of words in the text, without duplicating the item in memory
     """
-    return ilen(smart_split(text))
+    return len(list(split_words(text)))
 
 
 def extract_text(html: str) -> str:
@@ -83,7 +88,7 @@ def extract_text(html: str) -> str:
 
 
 def truncate_string(text: str, words: int) -> str:
-    return " ".join(islice(smart_split(text), words))
+    return " ".join(islice(split_words(text), words))
 
 
 def heading_id(heading: str) -> str: