diff --git a/lib/KorAP/Field/MultiTermToken.pm b/lib/KorAP/Field/MultiTermToken.pm
index 6e43493..5db3851 100644
--- a/lib/KorAP/Field/MultiTermToken.pm
+++ b/lib/KorAP/Field/MultiTermToken.pm
@@ -26,11 +26,11 @@
 
 
 sub surface {
-  $_[0]->{mt}->[0]->term;
+  substr($_[0]->{mt}->[0]->term,2);
 };
 
 sub lc_surface {
-  $_[0]->{mt}->[1]->term;
+  substr($_[0]->{mt}->[1]->term,2);
 };
 
 sub to_string {
diff --git a/lib/KorAP/Tokenizer.pm b/lib/KorAP/Tokenizer.pm
index d0a8a0f..19c98fa 100644
--- a/lib/KorAP/Tokenizer.pm
+++ b/lib/KorAP/Tokenizer.pm
@@ -147,8 +147,7 @@
     my $o_end = $mtt->o_end;
     my $l = $o_end - $o_start;
 
-    my $s = substr($mtt->lc_surface,2);
-    my $os = $s;
+    my $os = my $s = $mtt->lc_surface;
 
     # Algorithm based on aggressive tokenization in
     # tokenize.pl from Carsten Schnober