Zalgo text: letters buried under towers of accent marks. Set how much goes above, through and below. Then use the stacker to see exactly how one letter grows.
Every cursed letter is a normal letter followed by invisible "combining" characters. Add them one at a time and see why the letter grows taller than the line.
line abovea̗̍̄line below
U+0061 a, the base letter
U+030D combining vertical line above (above)
U+0317 combining acute accent below (below)
U+0304 combining macron (above)
4 characters, one visible letter. Fonts reserve room for about one or two accents; past that the marks draw over neighbouring lines, which is the whole Zalgo effect.
Ready-made cursed styles
6 styles · tap a line to copy
☠ Danger ☠U+2620
12 chars · X counts 21
Glitch heavyU+0300–036F
47 chars · X counts 47
Cursed miniU+0300–036F
22 chars · X counts 22
CursedU+0300–036F
71 chars · X counts 71
Cursed maxU+0300–036F
177 chars · X counts 177
Cursed gothicU+1D504 + marks
60 chars · X counts 67
Where Zalgo comes from
"Zalgo" started as a 2004 web-comic meme in which classic comic strips dissolved into distorted horror, with the phrase "he comes". The text version used combining characters to make words look like they were being eaten from above and below. The name stuck.
Why it spills over other lines
Fonts give every line a fixed height. A normal accent fits inside it, but 20 stacked accents don’t, and most apps don’t clip them. So the marks draw over the line above and below. That’s why max-strength cursed text looks so disruptive, and why some platforms strip it.
Be kind with it
A screen reader will announce every mark or skip the word. Heavy Zalgo in a group chat can also make messages hard to read on small screens. Keep it for jokes, spooky posts and names, not for information people need.
Yes. "Cursed text", "Zalgo text", "creepy text" and "glitch text" all describe letters with combining marks stacked on them. Glitch usually means a lighter version.
Why did my cursed text get cut off?
Many platforms cap how many combining marks a letter can carry or limit total characters. X, for example, counts every mark toward the 280 limit. Lower the dials and try again.
Can cursed text break an app?
Normal Zalgo is just long text. It can look messy but doesn’t harm devices. Apps have fixed old bugs with extremely long mark stacks, and TextForge caps output well below those levels.