What stacked text means
“Stacked text” is used for two different effects, and this generator makes both.
The first puts letters on top of each other. A word such as “stacked” becomes sͭaͨkͤd, with some letters drawn in miniature above the ones before them. It looks like old manuscript shorthand, where scribes saved space by writing small letters above the line.
The second runs text down the page, one letter per line, like a sign on a shop front or a name on a book spine. You can also stack whole words, one per line.
How to use this page
- Type in the Your text box. Clear empties it.
- Four results appear at the top in large type: Stacked Letters, Tall Stack, Vertical and One Word per Line.
- Press Copy beside the one you want, then paste it.
- The More styles list further down shows your text in every other style on the site, each with its own Copy button.
How letters end up on top
Unicode has a small set of combining Latin letters, from U+0363 to U+036F. A combining character has no width of its own. It is drawn above the character that comes before it, the same way an accent sits on a vowel.
There are only 13 of these letters:
| Letter | Code point | Letter | Code point |
|---|---|---|---|
| a | U+0363 | h | U+036A |
| e | U+0364 | m | U+036B |
| i | U+0365 | r | U+036C |
| o | U+0366 | t | U+036D |
| u | U+0367 | v | U+036E |
| c | U+0368 | x | U+036F |
| d | U+0369 |
The generator reads your text from left to right. When the next letter is one of these 13, it is turned into its combining form and placed on top of the letter before it.
- Stacked Letters puts at most one letter on top of each base letter. The result is still fairly easy to read.
- Tall Stack keeps going: every combinable letter in a row is piled onto the same base, so you get taller towers and fewer letters on the line.
Letters that have no combining form, such as k, l, n or s, always stay on the line and become the next base.
Examples
These were generated on this page:
| Input | Stacked Letters | Tall Stack |
|---|---|---|
| stacked text | sͭaͨkͤd tͤxͭ | sͭͣͨkͤͩ tͤͯͭ |
| hello | hͤllͦ | hͤllͦ |
| chord | cͪoͬd | cͪͦͬͩ |
| storm | sͭoͬm | sͭͦͬͫ |
“hello” looks the same in both, because no two combinable letters sit next to each other in it. “chord” shows the difference clearly: the tall version piles h, o, r and d onto the c.
The Vertical style turns “Hi you” into one character per line, with an empty line where the space was:
H
i
y
o
uOne Word per Line turns “stacked text” into “stacked” on the first line and “text” on the second.
Tips
- Choose words with the right letters. Words full of a, e, o, t and r stack well. Words such as “lynx” or “skill” barely change.
- Make it bigger before you judge it. The letters on top are small. Paste the text somewhere and zoom in to check it reads the way you want.
- Use vertical text sparingly. It takes up a lot of height. In a bio or a comment, three to six letters works better than a whole sentence.
- Combine with other styles. You can stack text and then make it upside down, or pair a vertical name with small text underneath.
Limits
Stacked letters depend on the font. On most current phones and computers the small letters sit neatly above the base. Some fonts place them too high or overlap them, and very old systems may show boxes. Tall stacks can also clip against the line above in apps that limit line height.
Search and screen readers handle stacked text poorly. A search for “chord” will not find cͪoͬd, and a screen reader may announce the top letters as separate symbols or skip them. Vertical text is read one letter at a time, which is slow to listen to. Keep anything important in plain text too.
Each letter on top is still a character, so stacking does not save space in a character limit, even though the word looks shorter.
Related tools
To flip text over, use the upside down text generator. For tiny raised and lowered letters, see the small text generator. If you want letters buried under random marks instead of neat stacks, try the glitch text converter.