import string


def load_file(infile):
    """Read and return text file as a list of lowercase words."""
    with open(infile, encoding='utf-8') as file:
        words = [word.lower() for line in file for word in line.split()]
        words_no_punct = ["".join(char for char in word if char not in \
                                 string.punctuation) for word in words]
    return words_no_punct