Zalgo Text Generator — Corrupt and Glitch Your Text
Zalgo text is the internet phenomenon of text that appears corrupted, glitched, or possessed — achieved by stacking Unicode combining diacritical marks above, below, and through normal characters. Named after the internet horror character Zalgo, this generator transforms any input into creepy, eldritch, reality-breaking text that spills beyond its lines. Adjustable intensity from mild distortion to full demonic overflow.
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What Is Zalgo Text?
Zalgo text is normal text that has been corrupted by stacking dozens of Unicode combining diacritical marks — tiny accent-like characters — above, below, and through each letter. The result looks glitched, possessed, or like it is overflowing the boundaries of reality itself.
These combining marks (from Unicode blocks U+0300–U+036F) were designed for legitimate linguistic use — adding accents and tone marks to letters — but Zalgo text exploits the fact that rendering engines will stack an unlimited number of them, causing text to visually overflow into surrounding lines.
The Origin of Zalgo
Zalgo began as an internet creepypasta character — a malevolent, reality-corrupting entity imagined by artist Dave Kelly (Shmorky). The character spread through horror forums, image macros, and unsettling webcomics in the mid-2000s, often accompanied by the phrase "HE COMES."
The glitch-text style became inseparably linked to the character, and the name "Zalgo text" stuck. It became a staple of internet horror aesthetics, creepypasta communities, ARGs (alternate reality games), and dark-themed social media content.
Zalgo Intensity Levels
| Intensity | Effect |
|---|---|
| Low (1–30) | Subtle corruption — a few stray marks above and below each letter |
| Medium (31–60) | Clear glitch effect — text looks visibly distorted and unstable |
| High (61–90) | Heavy corruption — letters are barely recognisable beneath stacked marks |
| Maximum (91–100) | Full demonic overflow — text spills through adjacent lines like something breaking through |
What Are Combining Diacritical Marks?
Combining diacritical marks are Unicode characters that modify the glyph before them rather than standing alone. Examples include the acute accent (´) used in café, the tilde (~) used in señor, and the umlaut (¨) used in über. The Unicode standard includes over 200 of these marks in the range U+0300 to U+036F.
Zalgo text applies them in three directions simultaneously — upward marks (above the baseline), midline marks (through the character), and downward marks (below the baseline) — far beyond their intended linguistic use. Because most fonts and renderers have no limit on stacking, the marks pile up into towering, chaotic columns of decoration.
Where Is Zalgo Text Used?
Zalgo text is used across horror communities, ARGs, video game modding, creepypasta wikis, and dark-aesthetic social media. It appears in SCP Foundation articles, in Undertale and other indie games as a signal of corrupted or malevolent characters, and in countless "glitch aesthetic" graphic design projects.
Despite its chaotic appearance, Zalgo text is fully copy-pasteable. The underlying letters remain present in the string — the combining marks are simply appended to each character. This means Zalgo text can travel anywhere regular Unicode text can: tweets, Discord messages, email subject lines, or anywhere else that renders Unicode.
How This Zalgo Text Generator Works
This translator iterates over each character in your input. For non-whitespace characters it randomly selects combining marks from three Unicode pools — upward marks, midline marks, and downward marks — and appends them directly after the base character. The number of marks applied to each character scales with the chosen intensity level.
The reverse function strips all combining marks using a simple Unicode category regex (\p{M}), recovering the clean original text. The API is also available if you want to integrate Zalgo generation into your own application.
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