Weird Text Generator

Where weird text characters come from

Weird text is made of real letters and symbols from other alphabets and technical character sets, picked because they resemble Latin letters. Each one has its own code point, which is why the look survives copy and paste.

Borrowed letters, not broken ones

The Strange Letters recipes swap each Latin letter for a look-alike from another script. In Greek Signal, a becomes Greek alpha, b a Georgian letter, d and e Cyrillic letters. Currency Code leans on Armenian. The capitals in Mixed Alphabet and Alien Frame are Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. To someone who reads those languages the result is a string of unrelated sounds, so avoid it where it could be taken for real words.

Enclosed, wide and monospace sets

Odd Blocks uses squared capitals (from U+1F130) and Parenthesis Party uses parenthesized letters (from U+249C). Each recipe has one case only, so capitals and lowercase come out the same. The Surreal recipes mix fullwidth forms, which come from East Asian character sets and are as wide as a Chinese or Japanese character, with mathematical monospace letters. Enclosed letters are missing from more fonts than the borrowed alphabets are; a missing one appears as an empty box or a question mark.

Look-alikes, trust and accessibility

Characters that imitate other characters are called confusables, and Unicode publishes security guidance about them because they are used to fake names and links. For that reason a service may refuse a name that mixes scripts, or convert it to plain letters.

A screen reader reads what is really there (Georgian and Armenian letter names, or a description such as squared Latin capital letter A for every letter) or skips it, and search will not match the plain word. Keep usernames, links and anything people need to find or hear in plain letters.

More questions

Why do weird characters appear in text I never styled?

Unintended garbage such as é in place of é, or rows of empty boxes, usually means a file was read with the wrong encoding or a font is missing. That is an error, unlike the deliberate look-alike letters made here.

Can I type these strange letters on my keyboard?

Only by adding a keyboard for each script involved, such as Greek, Armenian or Georgian, and switching between them letter by letter. Copy and paste is the practical way.

Why do capitals and lowercase look the same in some styles?

Squared, parenthesized and several borrowed alphabets are used here in a single case. The recipe maps both forms of a letter to the same character.

Will a screen reader read weird text correctly?

Usually not. It reads the real names of the borrowed characters, spells the word letter by letter, or skips it. Put the same words in plain letters nearby when the meaning matters.