What the ASCII Art Text Generator does
This generator turns words into big ASCII art banner letters that you can copy and paste into a README, a code comment, a terminal welcome message or a chat. Type "Hello" and you get the word five lines tall, drawn in # marks, solid blocks, a drop shadow or the letters themselves.
Choose a font and style, set the maximum width so the banner fits an 80-column terminal or a phone screen, add a border, and wrap the result as a //, # or /* */ comment so it drops straight into source code. Both fonts were drawn for this page; everything is generated in your browser.
How to use it
- Type a few words. Each line you type becomes its own banner; long lines wrap at word boundaries to fit the width you choose.
- Pick a font: Block is five rows tall and bold; Mini is three rows of line-drawing characters, compact enough for a code comment. For Block, pick a style - hash marks, solid blocks, shadow, the letter itself, dots or double width.
- Set the maximum width (80 columns suits most terminals and code style guides), and optionally add a border or centre the lines.
- To paste into code, choose the comment style for your language. Then copy the banner, copy it wrapped in a chat code block, or download it as a text file. Open See every style to compare them side by side.
Reading the results
The size shown is characters wide by lines tall. Many terminals and coding style guides assume 80 columns, email plain text often wraps at 72, and a phone chat window fits about 40 monospaced characters.
"Plain ASCII" means every character is a basic keyboard symbol, so the banner survives any terminal, log file or old system. The solid, shadow and box-border options use Unicode block and line characters, which look smoother but can turn into question marks where only ASCII is allowed.
Characters the fonts cannot draw - accented letters, emoji, most symbols - are shown as ? and listed, so you know exactly what changed.
Worked example: a banner at the top of a Python script
Type BUILD, choose the Block font with hash marks and the # comment style. Block letters are five rows high; B, U, L and D are five columns wide and I is three, with one space between letters, so BUILD is 5 + 5 + 3 + 5 + 5 + 4 = 27 columns, 29 with the comment marker - comfortably inside 80.
The result is five lines, each starting with "# ", that Python, shell scripts, YAML and Ruby all treat as comments, so the file still runs. Trailing spaces are removed, which keeps linters and diffs quiet.
For JavaScript or C, choose // instead. If a line of the Mini font would end in a backslash - which would make C and C++ treat the next line as part of the comment - every line is closed with a padded // so nothing after the banner is swallowed.
How these fonts are made
The Block font is a small bitmap: each letter is a grid of five rows, with a mark where there is ink and a space where there is not. Styles simply paint that grid differently - a # for every mark, a solid block, the letter itself, or two characters per cell for double width. The shadow style adds a light-shade character one step down and to the right of every solid cell.
The Mini font is drawn from the characters _ | / \ ( ), three rows high, in the spirit of the seven-segment digits on a calculator display. Neither font copies a FIGlet font file; both were drawn for a2z.tools. FIGlet, the classic Unix banner program, has hundreds of community fonts with their own licences, which is why this page uses its own.
Where ASCII banners work well
Project READMEs and command-line tools use them as a logo that needs no image; server message-of-the-day files greet people who log in; and section dividers in long configuration files make them easier to scan. Keep them short - a word or two - and remember that screen readers read ASCII art character by character, so put the real text next to it wherever accessibility matters.
Limitations: what the result does not prove
- The fonts cover A-Z, 0-9 and common punctuation. Lower-case letters are drawn as capitals, and accented letters, other scripts and emoji appear as ?.
- ASCII art only lines up in a monospaced font. Proportional fonts in word processors, social posts and most email clients will scramble it.
- Input is limited to 200 characters; banners are meant for a few words, not paragraphs.
- Screen readers cannot interpret the drawing. Always keep the plain words nearby for people who use them.
Privacy: where your data goes
Everything you paste, type or drop is processed in this browser tab. It is not uploaded, logged, stored or sent to analytics. Session recording and tag-manager scripts are switched off on this page.
Standards and sources
- RFC 20 - ASCII format for network interchange
- Unicode chart - Block Elements (U+2580-U+259F)
- Unicode chart - Box Drawing (U+2500-U+257F)
- PEP 8 - Maximum line length for Python code
- GitHub Docs - Creating and highlighting code blocks
Frequently asked questions
How do I make big text out of ASCII characters?
Type your words in the box and choose a font and style; the banner appears instantly and can be copied with one click. The Block font draws each letter five lines tall, so a five-letter word comes out about 29 characters wide.
How do I paste ASCII art into Discord, Slack or WhatsApp without it breaking?
Wrap it in a code block so it uses a monospaced font: press Copy for chat, which adds three backticks before and after. Without that, chat apps use proportional fonts and collapse spaces, and the letters fall apart.
How do I add an ASCII art banner to a code comment?
Choose your language's comment style - // for JavaScript, C or Java, # for Python or shell, /* */ for CSS - and copy. Every line is prefixed correctly and trailing spaces are removed, so the code still compiles and linters stay quiet.
Is this the same as FIGlet?
It does the same kind of job, but the fonts here were drawn for this page rather than copied from FIGlet's font files, which have their own licences. If you need a particular FIGlet font, use the figlet program itself.
Why does my ASCII art look wrong in Word or email?
Those usually use proportional fonts, where an i is narrower than an m, so the columns no longer line up. Switch the text to a monospaced font such as Courier or Consolas, or send it as plain text.
How wide should an ASCII banner be for a terminal?
80 columns is the traditional terminal width and still the default in many tools and style guides, so keep banners under that. For chat on a phone aim for about 40; the width setting wraps words onto new banner lines automatically.
Can I use emoji or accented letters in ASCII art?
Not in these fonts: they cover A-Z, 0-9 and common punctuation, and anything else is drawn as a question mark and listed under the result. True ASCII has no accented letters or emoji at all, which is what keeps the output safe everywhere.
Last reviewed by the A2Z.Tools team against the sources listed above.
