Eli5: why does ̸̢̛̞̱͓Z̵̪͙͊̎̌ä̷̳͕̋̚l̵͉̙̓͘ͅg̴̫̠̑̈͜o̴̻͛ text look the way it does?

Question

Eli5: why does ̸̢̛̞̱͓Z̵̪͙͊̎̌ä̷̳͕̋̚l̵͉̙̓͘ͅg̴̫̠̑̈͜o̴̻͛ text look the way it does?

In: 5073

Answer 1

UTF-8(the most common used way to encode text in ones and zeroes) has something called modifiers, it makes it possible to combine two characters into one letter. This is used to produce stuff like è from an “e” and the modifier “`” or ü from u and a modifier for two dotts on top.

Zalgo text exploits this feature by just adding as many random modifiers to any letter as it can, so that the text starts to look weird.