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Text to ASCII Art: Big Letters Made of Characters

Type a word and see it as big letters made of keyboard characters, in 84 styles. Click the art to copy it.

Big letter styles

Dark with shadow

Solid blocks with a thin shadow line
TextPaint

Blackie

Tall serif letters in solid blocks
TextPaint

Small negative filled

Works in any fontLight letters cut out of a dark bar
TextPaint

Pipes

Double line tubes
TextPaint

Black outline

Thick block outlines
TextPaint

Venom

Tall letters made of @ and * signs
TextPaint

Bold

Short letters with square corners
TextPaint

Fading

Shaded blocks that fade from top to bottom
TextPaint

Horizon

Thick line letters on a line background
TextPaint

3D blocks

Shaded blocks with a raised edge
TextPaint

Hearts

Letters drawn with ♥ hearts
TextPaint

Shady

Slanted letters with a shadow
TextPaint

Graffiti

Spiky slanted letters
TextPaint

Bulbs

Round letters with rings
TextPaint

LED matrix

Big dot letters like a sign board
TextPaint

Big negative

Letters cut out of a solid block
TextPaint

Bricks

Wide letters with pipe walls
TextPaint

Two lines, filled

One case onlyWorks in any fontShort block letters on a shaded strip
TextPaint

Two lines

One case onlyThe smallest block letters
TextPaint

Three rows

Small line letters, 3 rows tall
TextPaint

Tiny

Small line letters with a gap row
TextPaint

Matchsticks

Thin stick letters, 3 rows tall
TextPaint

Tiny, two rows

Thin letters only 2 rows tall
TextPaint

Blurred black

Works in any fontBlock letters on a light shaded strip
TextPaint

Small negative

Letters cut out of a dark bar
TextPaint

Splash

Blocks with dots and specks
TextPaint

Melting

Blocks that drip down into dust
TextPaint

Ghost

Tall letters that fade to dust at the bottom
TextPaint

Fading matrix

Letters cut out of a shaded wall
TextPaint

Windy

Blocks with a shaded trail
TextPaint

Black 7

Chunky blocks, 7 rows tall
TextPaint

Serif

Big letters with serifs, like a book title
TextPaint

Double struck

Letters with a doubled side line
TextPaint

Outline

Round letters drawn as an outline
TextPaint

Squared

Square letters that touch each other
TextPaint

Bubbles

Round letters with brackets
TextPaint

Meh

Plain line letters, 4 rows tall
TextPaint

ABC

Each letter drawn with itself
TextPaint

Links

Letters made of chain links
TextPaint

Waving

Loose letters that look like they wave
TextPaint

First grade

Simple letters like a child's handwriting
TextPaint

Acrobats

Letters made of little people
TextPaint

Flaming

Letters with flames on top
TextPaint

Peekaboo

Pipe letters with a face peeking over
TextPaint

Wet drops

Round letters with drops hanging below
TextPaint

Graffiti on a wall

Letters painted on a brick wall
TextPaint

Sticky glue

One case onlyLowercase letters that look glued
TextPaint

Stripes

One case onlyLetters made of : and = stripes
TextPaint

Horizon, tight

Horizon letters that share edges
TextPaint

Barcode

Letters hidden in a barcode
TextPaint

Caged

Line letters in a grid
TextPaint

Caged, rounded

Round corner letters in a grid
TextPaint

Handwriting

Joined up script, 19 rows tall
TextPaint

One line

Big letters that fit in one line
TextPaint

Neon tubes

Round glowing tubes that bend at every corner
TextPaint

Neon tubes small

The neon tubes in a short five line version
TextPaint

Extruded

Solid 3D blocks with a shaded side
TextPaint

Extruded small

Short 3D blocks with a shaded side
TextPaint

Braille micro

Pixel letters packed into Braille dots, only two lines tall
TextPaint

Cross stitch

X stitches sewn into dotted fabric
TextPaint

Slanted

Leaning pixel letters drawn with slashes
TextPaint

Circuit board

Thick traces with round solder pads at the ends
TextPaint

Circuit board small

A tiny circuit with solder pads
TextPaint

Double line

Two thin lines that run side by side
TextPaint

Wireframe

Plain keyboard lines with a plus at every corner
TextPaint

Wireframe small

Short plain keyboard lines with plus corners
TextPaint

Train tracks

Rails with wooden ties, ready for a toy train
TextPaint

Dashed

Dotted cut lines, like a coupon
TextPaint

Pixel

Square pixels from half blocks, only four lines tall
TextPaint

Mini

A tiny 3 by 5 pixel font in three lines
TextPaint

Fade down

Solid at the top, see through at the bottom
TextPaint

Long shadow

A shadow that stretches down to the right
TextPaint

Long shadow small

Short letters with a long shadow
TextPaint

Lake reflection

Letters standing over their own fading mirror image
TextPaint

Dripping paint

Wet paint running down from the letters
TextPaint

Stencil

Spray paint letters with gaps, like on a shipping crate
TextPaint

Glitch

A broken screen that slid some rows sideways
TextPaint

Bouncy

Every letter jumps to its own height
TextPaint

Binary

Letters of ones with stray zeros floating around
TextPaint

Night sky

Letters made of stars with a few more twinkling around
TextPaint

Printer banner

Hash marks, like the banners old printers made on long paper
TextPaint

Falling blocks

Square brackets stacked like a block puzzle game
TextPaint

Chalk

Rough strokes, like chalk on a sidewalk
TextPaint

Keycaps

Every letter on its own keyboard key
TextPaint

Click the art or Copy to copy it. Press Enter in the box for a second line of letters. The box takes up to 200 characters. Your text stays in this browser and is never sent.

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Last checked by the TextEditor.com team

How the letters are built

Each style is a set of small drawings, one for every letter, all the same number of rows tall. The tool takes the drawing for each letter and glues it to the right of the one before, row by row. Some styles, like Bulbs, let two letters share one column, so the letters touch neatly.

Each letter in its own color

It uses the first five letters from the box at the top. Every cell holds one character.

Why does my ASCII art look broken?

The art only works when every character takes the same width and every row sits right under the one above. Code editors and terminals use fonts made that way, called monospace fonts. Most apps don't, so the same art can fall apart. Try the four common causes:

The same art, four ways to break it

A monospace font, no wrapping, normal line spacing, and every space kept.

A code block fixes all four in Discord, Slack, Reddit and on GitHub. That is what the Discord or Markdown option under Copy as adds. On Instagram, TikTok and Facebook there is no code block, so save the art as an image instead.

Styles that survive a normal font

Block characters like █, ▀ and ▄ are drawn the same width in many fonts, and a few styles use no plain spaces at all. Those get the "Works in any font" badge. Thin line styles made of /, \ and _ break first, since a normal font draws the slash and the space at different widths. Switch Preview in to "Chat app font" to see which styles hold up.

The block characters come from two groups in Unicode. Box Drawing runs from U+2500 to U+257F and holds the lines in styles like Pipes. Block Elements runs from U+2580 to U+259F and holds the full block █ (U+2588) and the three shades ░ ▒ ▓.

Putting the art in code or a README

Programmers put big letters at the top of a file or in the startup screen of a tool. The art has to sit inside a comment, so the program skips it. Copy as adds the right marks to every line.

Comment marks by language
Where it goesWhat each line needs
Python, shell scripts, YAML# at the start
JavaScript, Java, C#// at the start
C, CSS, PHPThe whole art between /* and */
README on GitHub, Discord, RedditThree backticks ``` above and below
A web pageInside <pre>, with < and & written as codes

Many coders keep lines under 80 characters, so set Fit in to 80. The habit goes back to the IBM punched card from 1928, which had 80 columns. Python's style guide, PEP 8, still asks for lines of 79 characters or fewer.

Where banner letters came from

Big letters made of characters are older than the web. Unix has a program called banner that prints text as giant letters. It was used to make separator pages between print jobs, and it cuts each word at 10 characters.

In 1991 Glenn Chappell and Ian Chai wrote a small program called newban. It grew into FIGlet, short for "Frank, Ian and Glenn's letters", with version 2.0 in 1993. FIGlet reads its letter styles from font files, and people have drawn hundreds of them since. Many styles on this page look a lot like old FIGlet fonts.

The tallest style here is Handwriting, at 19 rows. The smallest, One line, fits each letter into a single row.

More text art to try

Frequently asked questions

How do I make my name in big letters?

Type your name in the box at the top. Every style updates at once. Click the art in the style you like and paste it where you want it.

How do I post ASCII art on Discord without it breaking?

Pick "Discord or Markdown code block" under Copy as, then copy. The art is wrapped in three backticks, so Discord shows it in a monospace font with every space kept.

Why does the art look broken on my phone?

Most phone apps use a font where letters have different widths, and they wrap long lines. Use a short word, pick a style with the "Works in any font" badge, or send the art as an image.

Why are some of my letters missing?

Each style only has drawings for some characters, mostly A to Z, digits and a few signs. Letters like é or ß are shown as a question mark or a gap, and the card lists the ones it could not draw.

Can I share the art on Instagram?

Instagram uses a normal font and has no code block, so most styles fall apart. Press Image on a card to save the art as a picture, and post that instead.

  • Font converterSee which Unicode block each letter style comes from: math letters, small caps, Cyrillic or Greek look alikes.
  • Fancy textType once and see your text in 50+ fancy styles: fonts, flips, frames, glitch and art.
  • DrawingCopy box drawing and block characters, or draw a table or box on a grid and copy it as plain text.
  • All text facesCopy text faces and kaomoji for any mood: happy, love, shrug, table flip, Lenny and more.
  • ASCII tableAll 128 ASCII codes with decimal, hex, octal, binary and HTML values.
  • Symbol alphabetsSee your text in five symbol alphabets at once: Morse code, Braille, NATO words, flag semaphore and ASL letters.

↑ ↓ to choose, Enter to open, Esc to close