Glitch Text Generator: Make Zalgo Text or Clean It Up

This glitch text generator turns your words into zalgo text, the messy, shaking letters people also call cursed, creepy or corrupted text. Type in the box, pick a strength and where the marks should go, then copy the result. It also works the other way: paste glitch text into the cleaner to strip the extra marks and get plain words back. Everything runs in your browser, so the words you type are never sent to us or saved.

How glitch text works

Every letter on a screen can carry small marks, like the accent on é. Unicode, the code system behind the text on phones and computers, keeps many of these in a block called Combining Diacritical Marks, which runs from U+0300 to U+036F and holds 112 code points. A combining mark takes up no space of its own, so it lands on top of, across, or under the letter before it. Glitch text piles many of these marks onto each letter, which is why the words seem to shake or melt.

That also means glitch text is still real text, not a picture or a special font. You can paste it almost anywhere you can type, and the person who sees it does not need to install anything. How tall the marks look depends on the font and the app, so the same text can look neat on one phone and wild on another. If it looks too messy where you post it, go back and pick a lower strength.

Strength levels compared

The four strengths decide how many marks each letter gets. The tool picks a random number in the range for every letter, so no two results are the same. Press New mix to roll a fresh version with the same settings. The table shows the word boo at each strength, made with this tool.

Strength	Marks per letter	Example (boo)	How it looks	Good for
Light	1 to 2	b̭o̜ͯo͎	Fuzzy but easy to read	Usernames, a spooky word in a caption
Medium	3 to 5	b̷̺ͬ̐o̶͔̰̪̾o̸͖̿	Clearly glitched, still readable	Memes, short posts, Halloween titles
Heavy	6 to 10	b̸̯̂̈͒̓͐̂̂͂ọ̵̲̜̟̭̱̟̋́o̸̩̐͑̅ͩͯ̄	Tall spikes above and below	One or two words, not whole sentences
Chaos	12 to 20	b̸̜̳̙̼̥͈͆ͬ̿̈̍̉ͣ̂̄̿o̶͖̞͕̭̲͈̹͔͇͖̹̦͇ͥ̀̃̑̿̿ó̷̱̠͕̣̣̮̲͇̜͇͖͉͖̩ͧͣ͛̒	Marks spill onto nearby lines	A joke or a dramatic reveal, used rarely

Which marks the tool uses

The tool uses 95 of the 112 marks in that block. There are 51 that sit above a letter, 5 that cut through it and 39 that hang below it, sorted by the combining class each mark has in the Unicode Character Database, version 15.1. We left out 17 marks that stretch across two letters, sit off to the side, or cannot be seen, because they break the text in odd places. Open the list below to see every mark on the letter o, with its code and name.

All 95 marks the tool uses (open the list)

On “o”	Code	Unicode name	Sits
ò	U+0300	grave accent	Above
ó	U+0301	acute accent	Above
ô	U+0302	circumflex accent	Above
õ	U+0303	tilde	Above
ō	U+0304	macron	Above
o̅	U+0305	overline	Above
ŏ	U+0306	breve	Above
ȯ	U+0307	dot above	Above
ö	U+0308	diaeresis	Above
ỏ	U+0309	hook above	Above
o̊	U+030A	ring above	Above
ő	U+030B	double acute accent	Above
ǒ	U+030C	caron	Above
o̍	U+030D	vertical line above	Above
o̎	U+030E	double vertical line above	Above
ȍ	U+030F	double grave accent	Above
o̐	U+0310	candrabindu	Above
ȏ	U+0311	inverted breve	Above
o̒	U+0312	turned comma above	Above
o̓	U+0313	comma above	Above
o̔	U+0314	reversed comma above	Above
o̖	U+0316	grave accent below	Below
o̗	U+0317	acute accent below	Below
o̘	U+0318	left tack below	Below
o̙	U+0319	right tack below	Below
o̜	U+031C	left half ring below	Below
o̝	U+031D	up tack below	Below
o̞	U+031E	down tack below	Below
o̟	U+031F	plus sign below	Below
o̠	U+0320	minus sign below	Below
ọ	U+0323	dot below	Below
o̤	U+0324	diaeresis below	Below
o̥	U+0325	ring below	Below
o̦	U+0326	comma below	Below
o̩	U+0329	vertical line below	Below
o̪	U+032A	bridge below	Below
o̫	U+032B	inverted double arch below	Below
o̬	U+032C	caron below	Below
o̭	U+032D	circumflex accent below	Below
o̮	U+032E	breve below	Below
o̯	U+032F	inverted breve below	Below
o̰	U+0330	tilde below	Below
o̱	U+0331	macron below	Below
o̲	U+0332	low line	Below
o̳	U+0333	double low line	Below
o̴	U+0334	tilde overlay	Through
o̵	U+0335	short stroke overlay	Through
o̶	U+0336	long stroke overlay	Through
o̷	U+0337	short solidus overlay	Through
o̸	U+0338	long solidus overlay	Through
o̹	U+0339	right half ring below	Below
o̺	U+033A	inverted bridge below	Below
o̻	U+033B	square below	Below
o̼	U+033C	seagull below	Below
o̽	U+033D	x above	Above
o̾	U+033E	vertical tilde	Above
o̿	U+033F	double overline	Above
ò	U+0340	grave tone mark	Above
ó	U+0341	acute tone mark	Above
o͂	U+0342	greek perispomeni	Above
o̓	U+0343	greek koronis	Above
ö́	U+0344	greek dialytika tonos	Above
o͆	U+0346	bridge above	Above
o͇	U+0347	equals sign below	Below
o͈	U+0348	double vertical line below	Below
o͉	U+0349	left angle below	Below
o͊	U+034A	not tilde above	Above
o͋	U+034B	homothetic above	Above
o͌	U+034C	almost equal to above	Above
o͍	U+034D	left right arrow below	Below
o͎	U+034E	upwards arrow below	Below
o͐	U+0350	right arrowhead above	Above
o͑	U+0351	left half ring above	Above
o͒	U+0352	fermata	Above
o͓	U+0353	x below	Below
o͔	U+0354	left arrowhead below	Below
o͕	U+0355	right arrowhead below	Below
o͖	U+0356	right arrowhead and up arrowhead below	Below
o͗	U+0357	right half ring above	Above
o͙	U+0359	asterisk below	Below
o͚	U+035A	double ring below	Below
o͛	U+035B	zigzag above	Above
oͣ	U+0363	latin small letter a	Above
oͤ	U+0364	latin small letter e	Above
oͥ	U+0365	latin small letter i	Above
oͦ	U+0366	latin small letter o	Above
oͧ	U+0367	latin small letter u	Above
oͨ	U+0368	latin small letter c	Above
oͩ	U+0369	latin small letter d	Above
oͪ	U+036A	latin small letter h	Above
oͫ	U+036B	latin small letter m	Above
oͬ	U+036C	latin small letter r	Above
oͭ	U+036D	latin small letter t	Above
oͮ	U+036E	latin small letter v	Above
oͯ	U+036F	latin small letter x	Above

Where zalgo text comes from

The name comes from Zalgo, a monster in a 2004 creepypasta, which is a scary story people pass around online. Wikipedia’s article on zalgo text says the style was first made in 2004 by a member of the Something Awful forum who posted edited cartoon images. Forum members came to treat Zalgo as a strange being that would end the world, and the broken letters became its voice. The same article notes that the text is also known as cursed text or glitch text.

The look stayed popular in memes and spooky posts long after the forum jokes faded. It fits Halloween captions, horror game names and fan art, where creepy is the whole point. If you like strange game text, our W.D. Gaster translator turns English into the symbol language of the Undertale character. The glitch tool on this page works with any language that uses letters or numbers.

When glitch text causes problems

Heavy glitch text can do more than look scary. Wikipedia’s article reports that some versions of Apple’s Messages app crashed when they got zalgo text, and that people used this to attack iPhone users. It adds that zalgo messages sent through Gmail have caused crashes too. So use the Chaos level only for a laugh, and never send it to someone as a prank on an old phone.

Glitch text is also hard for people who use screen readers, the apps that read a screen out loud. The accessibility guide from Texas Tech University tells people to avoid fancy Unicode fonts made by third-party apps because screen readers cannot read them. Keep glitch text for short, fun bits, and write names, dates, links and rules in plain letters. The Copy plain text button gives you a clean copy for alt text or a caption.

How to clean glitch text

Paste any glitch text into the cleaner, and it removes the combining marks and keeps the base letters. Turn on Keep normal accents for names like José or words in Spanish and French. In that mode the tool first joins each letter with an accent when Unicode has a ready-made letter for it, then drops the rest. Because zalgo marks are random, a letter may keep one stray accent, so check the result, or leave the box off to get plain letters only.

The cleaner also helps with usernames and comments that are hard to read. Once the marks are gone, you can see what the person actually wrote. If the clean text is full of short forms like ngl or istg, paste it into the text slang decoder to see what they mean. The cleaner never changes the order of the letters or adds anything new.

Character counts and length limits

Every mark is a code point, so glitch text gets long fast even when it looks short. X’s developer guide says a post can hold up to 280 characters and that X counts after a step called NFC normalization, so é typed two ways counts the same. The guide does not say how X counts long stacks of marks, and we have not tested it, so treat our count as a guide. Other apps have their own limits, and some may cut or block long stacks.

The Trim to fit box lets you set any limit you need. Type a number and press Trim to fit, and the tool removes random marks until the text fits. The letters themselves always stay, so if the plain text is already too long, you will need to shorten your words. The table under the result shows how many marks landed on each of the first eight letters.

Privacy, and other text tools

The generator and the cleaner run on this page, inside your browser. What you type is not sent to Slang Sense or stored, and the recent results list clears when you leave the page. We only count how often the buttons are used, with no text attached. Copying uses your own clipboard, the same as copying any other text.

Want letters that look stylish instead of broken? The fancy text generator has more than 100 Unicode styles, from cursive to bubble letters. It works the same way, with real characters you can paste anywhere. Pick that one for a clean, pretty name and this one when you want it to look haunted.

Glitch text is a style, not a word with a meaning, so it is safe for most places where jokes are fine. It is a poor choice for school work, job messages or anything someone must read quickly. Parents who see it in a child’s chat can paste it into the cleaner to read the words underneath. Most of the time it is just someone having fun with how letters look.

Seeing strange symbols that are emojis rather than letters? Paste them into the emoji decoder for a checked meaning of each one. This page only handles letters and the marks stacked on them. Emojis, Wingdings and other symbol sets follow different rules.

Last checked: October 28, 2026.