What is Zalgo Text?
Zalgo text — also referred to as corrupted text, glitch text, or void text — is normal text that has been modified using Unicode combining diacritical marks. These marks stack above, below, or through standard characters, resulting in a text string that appears to bleed or overflow into adjacent lines of the webpage.
The term originated in 2004 from a meme about "Zalgo" — a fictional, Lovecraftian entity representing chaos and corruption. Users on forums like 4chan and Reddit created distorted text scripts to represent Zalgo's presence, which became a staple formatting style in creepypastas, horror stories, and modern gaming clans.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Zalgo text?
Zalgo text (or glitch text) is created by adding combining diacritical marks above, middle, and below letters, creating a creepy, overflowing visual corruption.
Is Zalgo text safe to copy and paste?
Yes, Zalgo text is safe. It is regular text combined with standard Unicode marks. While it may look distorted, it contains no malware or scripts.
Why does Zalgo text break some layouts?
Because the combining diacritic characters have positive and negative height dimensions, they are designed to render outside the normal bounding box of a line. In some apps with strict line heights, this causes the diacritics to overlap adjacent text blocks or overflow borders.