Put -
, '
, \w
inside [...]
(meaning set of characters):
>>> import re
>>> text = "A tall-ish wall, with trim.I don't want to paint it;"
>>> re.findall("[-'\w]+", text)
['A', 'tall-ish', 'wall', 'with', 'trim', 'I', "don't", 'want', 'to', 'paint', 'it']