Tiny text generator

Unicode has no tiny font. What generators use are modifier letters: small raised letters that phoneticians write beside ordinary ones to describe a sound. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, a raised ʰ after a p marks the puff of air in “pin”, and a raised ʷ marks rounded lips, as on the k in “queen”.

Those letters were added for different jobs at different times, so a single tiny word is assembled from several Unicode blocks:

Fonts can draw characters from different blocks at slightly different sizes and heights. That’s why a tiny word can look a little bumpy, and why the 1 and the 0 in ¹⁰ may not quite match.

Unicode went almost 30 years without a raised q. One, 𐞥, finally arrived in version 14.0 in 2021, along with raised capitals C, F and Q, but older phones have no font for them. So, like most generators, this one swaps in ᑫ, which Unicode names “Canadian syllabics ke”: a character from the writing system of several Indigenous languages in Canada that happens to look like a raised q. That’s why “quiet please” becomes ᑫᵘⁱᵉᵗ ᵖˡᵉᵃˢᵉ.

Capitals have bigger holes. There’s no long-established raised capital for C, F, Q, S, X, Y or Z, so the generator falls back to the small raised letter. TINY TEXT comes out as ᵀᴵᴺʸ ᵀᴱˣᵀ and SIZE XS as ˢᴵᶻᴱ ˣˢ, with tall and short shapes side by side.

Tip: For an even look, type in lowercase. Every small letter has a raised form, with q covered by its stand-in, so ᵗⁱⁿʸ ᵗᵉˣᵗ looks consistent in a way TINY TEXT can’t.

Subscript, the lowered style in H₂O, is left out of the generator for a similar reason, only worse. As of Unicode 16 there’s no subscript b, c, d, f, g, q, w, y or z, so most words can’t be written that way. The subscript digits ₀ to ₉ are complete, which is why chemical formulas such as CO₂ come out fine.

Some raised and lowered characters are useful on their own, typed next to normal text rather than replacing it:

• Ordinals: raised letters after a normal number give 1ˢᵗ, 2ⁿᵈ, 3ʳᵈ or 25ᵗʰ. Type st, nd, rd or th in the box and paste the tiny version after your digits.
• Areas and volumes: m² and cm³ use the squared and cubed signs, which have been in standard character sets since the 1980s.
• Powers: 10⁶ for a million, or x² in a maths tutoring post.
• Chemistry: H₂O and CO₂ use subscript digits, which exist for all ten numbers.

These work because the main word or number stays plain; only a small mark is styled.

Tiny text is the written version of a whisper. It suits a joke, an aside or an afterthought that’s meant to be easy to miss: ⁿᵒᵗ ᵐᵉ ᶜʳʸⁱⁿᵍ under a sad selfie, or ˢᵒʳʳʸ ⁿᵒᵗ ˢᵒʳʳʸ after showing off a new purchase.

• Keep prices, conditions, dates and contact details out of it. They’re hard to read on a phone, and small print people can barely see looks like you’re hiding something.
• Screen readers may spell tiny letters out one by one or read their names, such as “modifier letter small t”, so the main message belongs in normal text.
• Search may not connect ᶜᵒᶠᶠᵉᵉ with coffee. If a word matters for being found, write it normally somewhere in the caption or bio.

Small caps and upside-down text, the other two styles shown first, come from the same phonetic alphabets. Small caps sit on the line at the height of small letters and stay readable for a whole line; upside-down text is for a joke that people turn their phone round to read.