What this tool does
It maps each character you type onto a small six-row picture made of # marks, then joins those pictures side by side into one big word. The result is plain text: copy it straight into a file, a terminal, or a chat message. There is no image, no font file, and no download step required — it is characters all the way down.
Supported characters are uppercase A–Z, digits 0–9, space, and the common punctuation marks . , ! ? ' - + = : ; / ( ) * # @ & $ %. Lowercase input is rendered in uppercase. Anything with no glyph shows as a question-mark shape so you can spot it.
Which style to pick
| Style | Built from | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Block | Solid block character █ | The cleanest, most readable look. Good default for terminal splash screens and README headers where the text should just be legible. |
| Banner | The hash sign # | The classic "server MOTD" look. Safe everywhere because # is plain ASCII — no risk of a box-drawing character rendering wrong on an old terminal. |
| Shadow | Solid █ plus a light ░ drop shadow one cell down and right | A quick 3D effect for a logo-style banner. Uses shaded block characters, so check it renders in your target terminal first. |
Only Banner is guaranteed pure 7-bit ASCII. Block and Shadow use Unicode block-drawing characters (U+2588, U+2591), which every modern terminal and editor handles but a very old or misconfigured one may not.
Where ASCII banners get used
- CLI splash screens — many command-line tools print a big name banner on startup or in
--help. It is printed from a string literal in the source. - README files — a project title rendered as a banner at the top of
README.md, wrapped in a triple-backtick code fence so the monospace alignment holds on GitHub. - Code comments — section dividers in a long file, or a banner in a build script so the important log line is easy to find in scrollback.
- Terminal MOTD — the message-of-the-day on a Linux server (
/etc/motd), shown to anyone who logs in over SSH.
In every one of these the text is displayed in a monospace font, which is why the art lines up. Put the same text in a proportional font — a web paragraph, a slide, most chat apps — and each row shifts by a different amount. If you need it to survive in Markdown, always wrap it in a fenced code block.
A note on FIGlet
The program people usually mean by "ASCII text generator" is FIGlet, released in 1991, which ships a library of several hundred .flf fonts (Standard, Big, Slant, Doom, and many more). This page does not embed that library — it is one compact block font with three display styles, built to stay small and load instantly. The output is the same kind of plain text and you use it the same way; it just is not the full FIGlet font set.
Questions
Which characters can it render?
Uppercase A–Z, digits 0–9, space, and common punctuation. Lowercase is rendered as uppercase; unknown characters show as a question-mark shape.
Why is it crooked when I paste it?
ASCII art only aligns in a monospace font. Use a terminal, a code editor, or a fenced code block in Markdown — not a proportional font.
How wide can the text be?
About seven columns per letter, so roughly 11 characters fit an 80-column terminal. The tool shows the width and warns past 80. Keep banner text short.
Is this FIGlet?
No. FIGlet is a separate program with hundreds of font files. This is one hand-built block font with three styles — same idea, smaller scope.
Is my text uploaded?
No. The font and rendering live in the page; the text stays in your browser.