ref: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10017147/python-replace-characters-in-string
Try regular expressions:
a = re.sub('[.!,;]', '', a)
You can also built an expression dynamically from a list of chars:
import re
a = 'a..!b...c???d;;'
chars = [',', '!', '.', ';', '?']
print re.sub('[%s]' % ''.join(chars), '', a)
Translate method works best for plain strings:
s = 'A.B!C?'
print s.translate(None, ''.join(chars))
for unicode strings the code is slightly more complicated:
s = u'A.B!C?'
print s.translate(dict((ord(c), u'') for c in chars))