This is an odd page for a font generator to publish. It's about when you shouldn't use fancy text.
Not never. Just not everywhere. Some of the people who visit your profile don't look at your bio at all. They listen to it, and fancy text can turn a name that looks great into something that's hard to follow by ear. Here's what happens, and how to keep your style without leaving anyone out.
What a screen reader is
A screen reader is software that reads out loud whatever is on the screen. People who are blind or have low vision use one to get around their phone, and so do some people who find reading text difficult for other reasons.
You probably already have one. iPhones come with a screen reader called VoiceOver, and Android phones come with one called TalkBack. They read out messages, buttons, profiles, and yes, bios and usernames too.
Why fancy letters can come out wrong
A screen reader doesn't care what your text looks like. It reads the characters underneath.
That's where fancy text runs into trouble. 𝐒𝐨𝐟𝐢𝐚 looks like Sofia, but it isn't made of the letters S, o, f, i and a. It's made of five completely different characters that only look like them. Our guide to how Unicode fancy fonts work explains why.
So what does a screen reader do with characters like that? It depends on the screen reader and how it's set up. Some spell styled letters out one at a time. Some read out each character's official name. Some skip them entirely, so that part of your name just goes silent. You can't choose which one your followers are using.
Where the names come from
Every character in Unicode has an official name, and that name is the kind of label a screen reader can end up announcing.
The name of 𝐇 is MATHEMATICAL BOLD CAPITAL H. Now picture a whole name written that way. Instead of hearing "Hazel", someone using a screen reader could hear a run of "mathematical bold" labels, one per letter, and have to piece your name back together from them. Or they could hear nothing where your name should be. Neither is the first impression you were going for.
Fancier styles have longer names. In 𝓢𝓸𝓯𝓲𝓪, the first letter alone is MATHEMATICAL BOLD SCRIPT CAPITAL S, and the next one is MATHEMATICAL BOLD SCRIPT SMALL O. If those names get read out, that's a lot to sit through for a single letter, and a five-letter name has five of them.
The hardest styles to listen to
Some styles are rougher than others. Zalgo and strikethrough text add extra characters, called combining marks, after your letters. The line in strikethrough text, for example, is a separate character named COMBINING LONG STROKE OVERLAY sitting after each letter and number. Zalgo can stack a whole pile of marks on every letter. That's a lot of extra characters for a screen reader to get through, and what comes out depends on the reader.
Decorative symbols and emoji are usually read out by their names too. ★ is called BLACK STAR and ✨ is called SPARKLES. Wrap your name in a row of them and those names get read out before anyone hears who you are.
Where it matters most
Fancy text isn't a problem everywhere. A styled word in the middle of a bio is easy to live with. It matters most in the places where people need to understand something or find you.
Your display name and username come first. They're how people know who you are, and they get read out a lot: on your profile, next to every comment, in every message.
Then there's the useful stuff in your bio, like how to contact you, what you stream or where your other accounts are. If someone can't make that part out, they can't act on it.
Hashtags matter too. A hashtag in fancy letters is hard to listen to, and depending on the app it may not match the plain version of that hashtag either.
Using fancy text kindly
You don't have to pick between a profile that looks good and one everyone can use. A few small habits cover most of it.
Style a word, not the whole bio. One styled word next to plain text is much easier to follow than a bio where every single letter has been swapped. Try a single cursive word as an accent rather than a full paragraph of it.
Keep your name readable somewhere. When the name at the top of your profile is in fancy letters, write it in plain letters in your bio as well, so anyone who missed it the first time can still catch it.
Write hashtags in plain letters, with a capital at the start of each word: #NightOwlGaming instead of #nightowlgaming. That's common accessibility advice, because it helps a screen reader tell where one word ends and the next begins.
Use the app's own formatting when it has some. On Discord, typing **like this** makes text bold, and underneath it's still ordinary letters. That gives you real bold without swapping in different characters.
Put emoji and symbols after your name, not in front of it. Since they're read out by name, a row of ✨ at the start means someone hears "sparkles" a few times before they hear you. At the end, it's just a sign-off.
And save the heavy effects for places where they're just decoration. A zalgo or aesthetic flourish in a post caption is a very different thing from your actual name.
Try it yourself
The best way to understand all this is to hear it for yourself. It only takes a few minutes.
- Find the screen reader in your phone's accessibility settings: VoiceOver on an iPhone, TalkBack on Android.
- Before you switch it on, look up how to switch it off again.
- Open your own profile and let it read your name and bio to you.
- Listen for anything that comes out garbled, gets skipped, or takes far longer than it should.
If you don't like what you hear, change it. You can still use bold or cursive letters for a word or two. Just make sure the parts that matter can be heard as well as seen.