import string


def count_words(contents):
    """
    Returns dictionary of words and their count.
    Removes all punctuation characters.
    """
    print("Count words")
    counts = {}
    for word in contents:
        word = word.lower()
        word = word.translate(str.maketrans("", "", string.punctuation))
        if not word in counts:
            counts[word] = 0
        counts[word] += 1
    return counts