Using the cursed text generator
This page opens at 12 marks per letter, which is heavy enough that the text climbs into the lines above and below on the first try. Drag Marks per letter down to 4 or 5 if you want something that still fits where you're pasting it.
Hang marks decides which way the growth goes. Swap the boxes to strip everything back off, including text cursed somewhere else.
Why platforms fight back
Cursed text is cheap to make and expensive to render. Each visible letter can cost a dozen code points, and a renderer that draws all of them will happily paint straight through the surrounding lines, which is why a comment box full of it can push a page around.
Unicode has a rule for this, though almost nothing enforces it. The Stream-Safe Text Format in UAX #15 caps a sequence at 30 combining marks before a base character, precisely so that software processing text in chunks can't be handed an unbounded pile. The cap exists for implementers rather than for you, and a browser will draw far more than 30 if asked.
Most platforms take the blunter route. Names get normalised or filtered, so cursed text usually survives in a message and dies in a username.
Cursed, zalgo, glitch
They're mostly the same thing under different names, and the names came from different places. Zalgo is a horror character from edited comic strips in the mid 2000s, and the zalgo page tells that story along with the Stack Overflow answer that made it famous among programmers.
"Cursed" arrived later and from image culture, where a cursed image is one that's wrong in a way nobody can name. The text borrowed the adjective.
Glitch text is the one that genuinely differs. It swaps letters for other letters rather than decorating them, so it stays on its line and reads as damaged type instead of a collapse.
Related conversions
Creepy text is the same mechanism hanging everything below the line, which drips rather than explodes. Strikethrough is the restrained end of it, exactly one mark per character.
The characters underneath are never touched by any of them, and the Unicode converter will show you that: the original letters are still in there, in order, between the marks.
Questions
Is cursed text the same as zalgo?
In practice, yes. Both stack Unicode combining marks on ordinary letters. The names come from different corners of the internet and describe the same characters.
How do I remove cursed text?
Paste it in and swap the boxes. Every combining mark the tool recognises is dropped, and the original characters come back in order.
Why won't it work in my username?
Most platforms normalise or strip combining marks in names, because a name that's three lines tall breaks every list it appears in. Bios and messages usually allow them.
Is there a limit on how cursed it gets?
This tool stops at 15 marks per letter. Unicode's own Stream-Safe Text Format suggests 30 as a processing limit, but nothing in a browser enforces it.