The basics
What Exactly Is Zalgo Text?
Zalgo text is normal text with accent marks piled above, through and below each letter, so the words look like they're glitching, bleeding or melting off the screen. It's made entirely from standard Unicode characters. That means you can copy it and paste it anywhere ordinary text goes.
Nothing about it is an image or a special font. Paste "H̗̟e̺̙ c̟o̺m̘e͚s̰" into a text editor and press the right arrow key: you'll see the cursor stall on each letter while it steps over the hidden marks one by one.
Is it a font you need to install?
No. A font changes how letters look on your own screen only. Glitch text works differently, because the marks are real characters sitting inside the text itself.
So when you paste it into a Discord chat, everyone in the channel sees the same distortion you do. There's nothing for them to download.
Where did the name Zalgo come from?
Zalgo began as a horror meme on the Something Awful forums in 2004. Users took harmless newspaper comics and edited them so the characters' eyes bled and their faces warped, often with the line "He comes."
The glitchy text style picked up the name a few years later. It fit, since the marks look like the same creeping corruption spreading across a sentence. That's why the tool above opens with "He comes" as its sample.
Under the hood
How Do Void Characters and Creepy Text Glyphs Work?
Two kinds of character do the work here. Combining marks create the visible chaos, and void characters take up space in the text without drawing anything at all.
What are combining marks?
A combining mark is a character that has no shape of its own until it attaches to the letter before it. The acute accent in café is one. Unicode keeps 112 of these in its Combining Diacritical Marks block, from U+0300 to U+036F.
Unicode never set a hard cap on how many can attach to one letter. Glitch text exploits that by stacking a dozen or more.
| You see | What's inside | Characters |
|---|---|---|
| e | The letter e | 1 |
| é | e + U+0301 (acute accent) | 2 |
| e̖ͦ | e + one mark below + one above | 3 |
| e͇̗̯͉̲̞̅̃ͫ̋͆ | e + 11 stacked marks | 12 |
What are void characters?
Void characters are invisible. They exist in the text, count toward length limits, and draw nothing on screen. The zero-width space (U+200B) and the combining grapheme joiner (U+034F) are two common ones.
Gamers know another. The Hangul Filler (U+3164) became the go-to trick for "blank" player names, and several games have since blocked it. This tool's Through setting occasionally adds a joiner, which is harmless but does count as a character.
Why does glitch text grow taller instead of wider?
Each mark sits on top of the one before it, so the stack climbs upward or hangs downward. The letter itself never moves sideways. A word at Max can be six or seven lines tall while staying exactly as wide as the plain version.
Step by step
How Do You Make Glitch Text With This Tool?
It takes about ten seconds. Here's the order that gets the best result.
- 1Type or paste your text into the box. Short works best: one to four words.
- 2Drag the slider, or tap Mini, Medium or Max to jump straight to a preset.
- 3Choose where marks go: Above, Through, Below, or any mix of the three.
- 4Tap Re-roll until you like the pattern. The height stays the same; only the marks change.
- 5Check the "characters when pasted" count, then tap Copy.
What does each slider level do?
The slider sets how many marks each letter gets on every side you've switched on. Start at Mini, and only go higher for a single word.
| Level | Marks per letter, per side | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Mini Glitch (1–3) | 0 to 2 | Nicknames and captions people still need to read |
| Medium Glitch (4–7) | 2 to 6 | Halloween bios, horror story titles, spooky posts |
| Max Glitch (8–10) | 5 to 14 | One-word reactions and meme punchlines |
Platforms
Where to Safely Use Glitch Text on Social Media
It pastes into almost any text box. Staying there, and looking right once it's posted, is a different story on every platform.
Can you use it on Discord?
Yes, and it's the best home for it. Messages hold up to 2,000 characters, which is plenty for a creepy one-liner. Nicknames stop at 32 characters, so only a short name at Mini will fit.
Here's a real snag, though. Many servers run moderation bots that delete messages with heavy combining marks as spam. If your Medium-level "g̗̟o̺̙o̙d̘ n̰i͚g̟h̺t̰" disappears a second after you send it, that's the bot, not a bug.
Does it work on X?
It posts fine, but every mark counts toward the 280-character limit. A single word at Max can eat 150 of those. Glitch one word and leave the rest of the post plain.
What about Instagram and TikTok comments?
Comments usually go through, but tall stacks get clipped or spill into the line above. A common case: someone posts a Max-level "RUN" under a horror Reel, and the marks cover the username of the comment right above it. It looks broken rather than scary.
Mini or Medium with only Below switched on avoids most of that.
Can you send it on WhatsApp?
Yes. Chats accept it without trouble, and it makes a fun Halloween group name. Keep an eye on older phones in the group, since heavy stacks can make a long chat scroll less smoothly.
Will games accept glitch text in player names?
Usually not. Most games filter combining marks out of player names, so a glitch name that pastes fine will often fail when you press save. For a spooky gaming name, try a Gothic or Small Caps style from the main font generator instead.
Known issues
What Problems Can Glitch Text Cause?
Why does it overlap other lines?
Apps set a fixed height for each line of text, and a tall stack of marks simply ignores it. The marks keep drawing upward into the line above or downward into the one below. Lowering the level, or switching off Above or Below, is the quickest fix.
Why does it look different on another phone?
Every font positions accent marks its own way. On an iPhone the marks might stack in a neat tower, while Windows can squash some of them together into a blur. The characters are identical; only the drawing differs.
Can it crash or slow down a phone?
It won't crash a modern phone. A very long message packed with Max-level stacks can make an older phone stutter for a moment while it draws them all. The famous crash messages, like the Telugu character bug that froze iPhones in 2018, came from specific rendering bugs, not from ordinary stacked marks.
Unicode's own guidance suggests keeping to 30 marks or fewer per character. Our Max level stays within that.
How do screen readers handle it?
Badly. Some screen readers read every mark aloud, so one glitched word can come out as a long string of names like "combining grave accent." Keep glitch text away from anything people need to act on, such as an event time or a contact line.
Tips
How Can You Make Glitch Text Look Better?
A little goes a long way. These five habits separate creepy from messy.
- Glitch one word, not the sentence. "The house is w̗̟a̺̙t̟c̘h̰i͚n̺g̰" lands harder than a fully corrupted line.
- Switch off Through for readability. Marks that cut across the middle hide the letter itself.
- Use Below only in comments. Downward stacks rarely collide with the username above.
- Re-roll two or three times. Some random patterns simply look better than others.
- Preview before posting. Send it to yourself first and check it on your phone.
Want something readable instead?
The main generator has 132 styles, from Bold and Cursive to gaming tags.