Zalgo: The good, the bad, and the very, very ugly
Have you ever seen this? The best way to predict the future is t̷o̶ ì̴͇n̵͓̆v̶̝̕ȇ̷̝͈̩͊̇̾̄̂̀̈̔̀͛͋͆̓͒͘͝ͅn̸̦̙̣̤͓̜̼͙̲͔̺͚̮̬͆̇̇͐̇̽̒̎t̵̮͎̃̒͒̋̂̏̒̀̿͌͗̄͑̀̀͒̈̚͠͝ ȋ̸̧̛̭̠͈̰̰̦̹̥̜̖̈̂̀̽̿̋̊́̇̍̓̆̉̄̄̊͊̒̎͋̂̒̍̽̄͝ͅt̶̨̢̺̱̻̭̣͉͕̥͚̯͍̣͕͔̬̥͔̘̼͌̉̀̄̊̆͛̽̍̐̔̐̀̾̋̆͒̏̏̋͋̽͗̌͋͗.̸̧̨̧̡̢̪͙̦͙̝̜̦̞̳̤͖̟͍̮͖̘̙̳͉̳̲̲͉̠͎̽̍̓̒̅̿͂͑̎͊̋͒̈́̅̈́̆̽̒͛͐͛̉̀̈́̈̉̏̏̋̒͘͝͝͝ In the lore of the web, this kind of a strange glitchy text is known as Zalgo : Zalgo is a meme where a popular picture/comic is edited in a way that “corrupts” it, producing scary results. The term “Zalgo” refers to the being apparently responsible for the corruption, whose name is uttered by its victims in an eldritch manner. I’ll let you read up on that at the above link if you are curious, but what’s interesting for us here is that… Zalgo is text. You can grab the line above. You can copy and paste it. You can even try to edit it. But… what is that, and why is it possible to construct text this way? In Unicode, ä is a completely independent character from ą, and they are both completely unrelated to a – any type designer treats them as a variant of the same base letter, but there’s nothing preventing them from making them look very, very different. But now think of the Vietnamese language, which has six tones mapping to six accent characters , and many of them can be combined into pairs: = 2x) and (width >= 700px)" srcset="https://unsung.aresluna.org/_media/zalgo-the-good-the-bad-and-the-very-very-ugly/1.2096w.avif" type="image/avif"> = 3x) or (width >= 700px)" srcset="https://unsung.aresluna.org/_media/zalgo-the-good-the-bad-and-the-very-very-ugly/1.1600w.avif" type="image/avif"> This gives us 104 accented letters, and 30 doubly accented letters, just for this one language. Sure, you can imagine adding all of them as independent characters, but at some point another idea appears on the table: What if we just allowed a system where you can add an accent to any letter? Instead of outputting ä as one letter, you could output a followed by ̈ , which then would be recombined by the rendering logic into ä. And to get two accents, output a and then ́ and ͆ , to get á͆. Now, the zero-one-infinity rule says that once you open the door to two, you might as well allow three or even more. Add to it the fact that some accents go under the letter, and here you go: perfect conditions for the Zalgo meme that just creatively stacks up accents one after another – not for communication, but solely for aesthetics. Today, there are a whopping 122 combining diacritical marks used in all sorts of occasions, and Zalgo generators grab many of them. A fun thing to try in one of them is to let it do its thing, and then keep pressing Backspace: Now you might ask, why do separate characters exist for ä and ą then? Why isn’t every accent combining? Two things: history (some pre-combined accented characters existed for as long as movable type was around) and complexity (combining accents are harder to process, to display, to edit, and even to design). There were many debates around this – you can open the History box on the above Wikipedia page and pore over the old documents to learn. (As a matter of fact, today all Vietnamese letters exist as precombined characters, too.) A few bits that might be useful to know: = 2x) and (width >= 700px)" srcset="https://unsung.aresluna.org/_media/zalgo-the-good-the-bad-and-the-very-very-ugly/3.2096w.avif" type="image/avif"> = 3x) or (width >= 700px)" srcset="https://unsung.aresluna.org/_media/zalgo-the-good-the-bad-and-the-very-very-ugly/3.1600w.avif" type="image/avif"> = 2x) and (width >= 700px)" srcset="https://unsung.aresluna.org/_media/zalgo-the-good-the-bad-and-the-very-very-ugly/4.2096w.avif" type="image/avif"> = 3x) or (width >= 700px)" srcset="https://unsung.aresluna.org/_media/zalgo-the-good-the-bad-and-the-very-very-ugly/4.1600w.avif" type="image/avif"> Eagle-eyed among you might have noticed that ä and á͆ look different above. As far as I understand, if the combination of a letter and accents isn’t supported by the current font, the entire combination falls back to a different font , rather than picking bits and pieces from different fonts. There are even more combining characters , and emoji use a similar system to add skin tone modifiers, gender, or turn a woman next to a fire truck into a female firefighter. Lastly, I found this warning on the very Fandom page that explained Zalgo amusing: Do not post Zalgo text in the discussion area or anywhere else on the wiki. Doing so will subject you to a ban. Every warning tells a story; it seemed like more people were perhaps infatuated with the glitchy text than expected. #encoding #typography Zalgo is a good reminder that while it’s hard to contain text , you can at least crop it – often you might see things like these, where in some places Zalgo is allowed to roam free, and in others the text is clipped so three or more accents fall outside of the clipped area. Eagle-eyed among you might have noticed that ä and á͆ look different above. As far as I understand, if the combination of a letter and accents isn’t supported by the current font, the entire combination falls back to a different font , rather than picking bits and pieces from different fonts. There are even more combining characters , and emoji use a similar system to add skin tone modifiers, gender, or turn a woman next to a fire truck into a female firefighter.
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