How glitch (zalgo) text works
Glitchy ‘zalgo’ text is created by stacking multiple Unicode combining diacritical marks above, below, and through each regular character. Because each mark is its own extra character in the underlying text, the more marks you add, the longer and more visually chaotic the text becomes.
How this calculator works
Enter the length of the text you plan to glitch and choose an intensity level. The calculator estimates how many combining marks would be layered onto each character at that intensity and reports the resulting total character (codepoint) count and overall size growth.
Actual rendered appearance varies by font and platform, since not every device displays large numbers of stacked combining marks the same way.
Last reviewed August 2026