Glitch text generator
Generated in your browser · nothing is uploaded
Stacks combining marks above, through and below each character. Turn the intensity up and the text bleeds into the lines around it: the effect usually called zalgo.
How to use the glitch text generator
Combining marks were designed so that any accent could be attached to any letter without encoding every combination separately. Every mark stacked here is a real codepoint out of the Combining Diacritical Marks block, the same mechanism that puts the accent on an é. Nothing in the standard limits how many you may attach to one character, and rendering engines generally draw them all. So what looks like a rendering failure is entirely valid Unicode being asked to do something nobody designed it for, and that gap is the whole effect.
The name zalgo comes from a 2004 web horror meme about a corrupting entity. The story faded and the name stayed attached to the visual, which is why "glitch text", "cursed text" and "zalgo" all describe the same thing. Because stacking dozens of marks has no defined behaviour, the result depends on the font, the renderer and the layout it lands in: one string can look mildly frayed in a browser and completely unreadable in a chat client. Check it where you intend to use it.
Three costs are worth knowing before any of it is posted. The text becomes very long in codepoints, so it spends a character limit fast; at intensity ten a single letter can carry twenty marks, and a display name that fits as plain text will not fit at all. It also overflows its line box in most layouts, which is why several platforms normalise or strip the marks on save and why heavy stacking is treated as disruptive on a few of them.
The third is the one nobody mentions, and it is the reason the intensity slider matters more than it looks. The base letters are still there underneath, so unlike the styled alphabets this is not unreadable to a screen reader by construction — but readers differ and several announce the marks, so a five-letter word at intensity ten can arrive as a hundred spoken symbols, and a refreshable Braille display renders every one of them with no way to skip past. Someone listening to a feed rather than looking at it gets the cost of the effect without any of the effect. For anything you actually intend to publish, two or three is enough to read as corrupted, and switching off a direction keeps the bleed on one side.
What people use it for
- Making a username or a heading look corrupted
- Getting a horror or creepypasta effect out of plain text
- Setting a title card for a horror game or a video thumbnail
- Adding a light glitch to two or three words instead of a whole line
- Seeing how far a layout lets text bleed out of its line box
- Finding the intensity a platform tolerates before it strips the marks
Questions
Text with many combining marks stacked on each character so it bleeds vertically out of its line.
Yes. Two names for one effect. The intensity is what separates a lightly frayed word from the full corrupted block.
A 2004 web horror meme about a corrupting entity. The story is long forgotten and the name stayed with the visual.
Entirely. These are the ordinary combining marks that put an accent on a letter, in quantities nobody anticipated when the mechanism was designed.
Because nothing limits how many marks can stack, and renderers draw them all. The line box does not grow to fit.
Stacking dozens of marks has no defined behaviour, so the font, the renderer and the layout each decide how far they bleed.
Sometimes. Several platforms normalise or strip combining marks when they save, and nothing at this end can prevent it. Try a short one first.
It can. Several platforms treat heavy zalgo as disruptive because it breaks their layout.
It depends on the reader, and none of the answers are good. The base letters survive underneath, so the word is technically still there, but several readers announce every combining mark and a Braille display renders all of them. At intensity ten that is around twenty extra symbols per letter for someone who is listening rather than looking. Keep it low, or keep it out of anything people have to read.
Each mark is a separate codepoint. At intensity 10 one letter can be twenty codepoints, which is how a short name stops fitting.
Yes; above, through and below can be toggled separately.
Intensity two or three, and turn off the directions you do not want. Above only reads as frayed; all three at once reads as broken.
The text cleaner strips them. Its accent pass drops every combining mark, and the letters underneath were never altered, so the original word comes back.