Glitch Text Generator: Make Zalgo Cursed Text

Want text that looks deliciously corrupted? Type below and get instant glitch text, letters drowning in zalgo marks, ready to copy and paste anywhere: Discord messages, TikTok comments, spooky bios. Free, no signup, works on any device.

What is a glitch text generator?

Glitch text is the style that looks like your message is possessed: c̷u̶r̷s̸e̷d̸ instead of cursed. Letters sprout chaotic stacks of marks above and below until the whole thing reads like a corrupted file. The internet calls it zalgo text or cursed text, a meme since the mid-2000s, born from a creepy cartoon character named Zalgo and raised by creepypasta forums and Discord servers.

Under the hood it's a clever Unicode trick: the combining diacritical marks (U+0300–U+036F), the accents real languages use to modify letters, like the accent in é. Normally a letter gets one. A glitch generator stacks dozens on a single character, piling them above, below, and straight through the letter until it looks broken. They're still genuine text characters, so they copy and paste, but "broken" is the entire aesthetic.

This is the only style on FontGenies that's supposed to look wrong. Everywhere else we promise clean rendering; here, corruption is the product.

Where glitch text works best

Glitch text is a novelty style with a natural habitat, and one undisputed home turf:

• Discord, the native land of zalgo: messages, nicknames, channel names, and server descriptions
• TikTok, comments and captions where cursed text reads as a joke, not a bug
• Instagram, spooky-season bios and story text (sparingly, see Limitations)
• X (Twitter), display names and posts, especially around Halloween
• YouTube, comments and video titles with a horror or meme angle
• WhatsApp & Telegram, messages to friends who'll get the joke
• Gaming, in-game names and clan tags, where the platform allows combining characters

The through-line: informal, meme-literate audiences. Glitch text in a LinkedIn headline isn't edgy, it's a typo. Save it for the places where "cursed" is a compliment.

How to make glitch text (3 steps)

1. Type your text. Enter it in the generator box above, a name, a word, a short phrase. Shorter is better (you'll see why).

2. Copy the glitch version. Click the preview or the Copy Glitch Text button. You'll see a "Copied ✓" confirmation.

3. Paste it anywhere. Long-press (or right-click) in Discord, TikTok or any app and paste. Done, your text is now cursed.

The anatomy of cursed text: how combining marks work

Here's what's actually happening. Take the letter "e": Unicode lets you attach combining marks to it, marks that float above, strike through, or hang below. Each renders relative to the base letter. Stack five or six and the letter starts to look haunted; stack fifteen and it's barely a letter anymore.

That's why glitch text behaves so differently from every other fancy style:

• Random by design. The same word comes out different on every generation, don't like this one? Generate again.
• Renders differently everywhere. Each app and font draws combining marks slightly differently, so iPhone, Android, and desktop Discord each show a slightly different curse.
• Has real height. Stacked marks extend far above and below the text line, which is exactly why glitch text can blow up line spacing (see Limitations).

Why every generation looks different

Type "hello" twice and you'll get two different cursed masterpieces, that's not a bug, it's the whole point. The generator rolls the dice for every character: how many marks, which marks, above, below, or through the letter. More marks means more cursed.

• Regenerate until you love it. There's no single "correct" zalgo output, generate a few times and pick the version with the right energy, from lightly haunted to fully possessed.
• Copy the exact version you want. Because it's random, you can't retype your way back to the same output. Once you see the one, copy it immediately.

Limitations worth knowing

Glitch text carries more honest caveats than any other style here. Read these before you commit:

• It breaks layouts. Stacked marks extend far above and below the text line, overlapping neighboring lines and stretching line spacing. Short text minimizes the damage.
• Screen readers choke on it. Each combining mark may be announced separately, turning a single word into a flood of gibberish. This is the least accessible style on the site, never use it for anything people need to read.
• Some apps strip or truncate it. A few platforms limit combining marks per character or normalize them away entirely, your cursed masterpiece may arrive as plain text. Test in the exact app first.
• It eats character limits. Every combining mark counts as a character, so a 5-letter word can balloon past 100 characters, tight bios fill up fast.
• Search and mentions break. Nobody can @-mention or search a zalgo username reliably. Never put glitch text where people need to find or tag you.
• It can read as a bug, not a joke. Outside meme-literate spaces, cursed text looks like a rendering error. Know your audience.

Tips for best results

1. Keep it tiny. One cursed word per message is the sweet spot, a whole paragraph of zalgo is unreadable noise.
2. Regenerate freely. Generate three or four versions and pick your favorite, intensity varies every time, and medium intensity reads best where extreme zalgo collapses into a smear.
3. Test in the target app. Paste into Discord, TikTok, or wherever it'll live before you commit, rendering and stripping vary by platform.
4. Never in usernames. Display names and messages, yes; the actual @username people type to find you, no.

Frequently asked questions