Zalgo Text Generator: How to Create Glitch & Creepy Text
Zalgo text — that creepy, glitchy text that looks like it's being consumed by darkness — is one of the most visually striking effects you can create with Unicode. Characters appear to bleed, stack, and overflow their boundaries, creating an unsettling, otherworldly appearance.
Whether you want to add horror vibes to a Discord message, create creepy social media content, or just have fun with text effects, this guide explains how zalgo text works and how to control it.
What Is Zalgo Text?
Zalgo text gets its name from a creepypasta meme about a malevolent entity called "Zalgo." The text effect mimics corruption and chaos by stacking Unicode combining characters above, below, and through regular letters.
Technically, zalgo text uses Unicode "combining diacritical marks" — characters designed to be placed on top of or below other characters. When you stack many of these marks on a single letter, the result is text that appears to glitch, drip, or dissolve. The more marks you add, the more extreme the effect.
Intensity Levels
The Zalgo Text Generator on Fontlix offers four intensity levels:
Light Zalgo: Subtle distortion. A few marks above and below each letter. The text is still readable but has an eerie quality. This level works on most platforms and is the most practical for everyday use.
Medium Zalgo: Moderate distortion. The text becomes harder to read as more marks overlap. Good for horror-themed content where readability is secondary to atmosphere.
Heavy Zalgo: Significant distortion. Letters are heavily obscured by stacked marks. The text becomes more of a visual effect than readable content.
Insane Zalgo: Maximum chaos. Each character carries dozens of combining marks, creating extreme visual overflow. This level can cause rendering issues on some platforms and should be used sparingly.
Where Does Zalgo Text Work?
Discord: The best platform for zalgo text. Discord renders combining characters well, and the gaming/community culture appreciates creative text effects. Use it in spooky-themed servers, horror game channels, or for dramatic effect.
Twitter/X: Light to medium zalgo works in tweets. Heavy and insane levels may be stripped or cause display issues. The character count impact is significant since each combining mark counts toward the limit.
Facebook: Light zalgo generally works. Heavier levels may be filtered, especially in comments.
Instagram: Instagram actively filters excessive combining characters. Light zalgo may work in bios, but anything beyond that will likely be stripped. This is one platform where zalgo is not recommended.
Reddit: Supports zalgo text in posts and comments. It's commonly used in horror subreddits and for creative writing.
Creative Uses for Zalgo Text
Horror and creepypasta content: The obvious use. Zalgo text is essential for horror-themed posts, stories, and channel names. It visually communicates "something is wrong" before the reader even processes the words.
Gaming: Some games support combining characters in names. A lightly zalgo-ed name creates a unique, glitchy appearance that stands out in player lists.
Art and design: Digital artists use zalgo text as a design element in glitch art, cyberpunk aesthetics, and experimental typography.
Humor: Light zalgo on an otherwise normal message creates comedic absurdity. It's the text equivalent of a voice distortion filter — same content, entirely different vibe.
How Combining Characters Work
Every letter in Unicode can have combining marks attached to it. These marks were originally designed for legitimate purposes — accents in French (é), umlauts in German (ü), and tone marks in Vietnamese. Zalgo "abuses" this system by stacking far more marks than any real language uses.
Common combining marks used in zalgo text include marks that go above characters (like accents and dots), marks below (like cedillas and underlines), and marks through the middle (like strikethrough lines). By randomly selecting and stacking these, the generator creates the characteristic chaos.
Related Effects
If you like the visual impact of zalgo but want something more controlled, try the Strikethrough Generator for clean line-through effects, or the Invisible Text Generator for creating hidden or zero-width characters. The Vaporwave Generator creates a different kind of distortion — spaced-out, retro text that feels glitchy in a more controlled way.
Generate Zalgo Text
Unleash the chaos with the Zalgo Text Generator — four intensity levels, instant copy and paste, free to use.