Accented letters are transliterated, so Crème Brûlée becomes creme-brulee rather than a string of percent codes.
Drop a headline in and get a URL slug that will not break in a browser bar, a redirect map or an email client. Accented characters are transliterated rather than escaped, so Crème Brûlée becomes creme-brulee instead of a row of percent codes. Punctuation, quotes and emoji are removed, runs of spaces collapse to a single separator, and stray separators at either end are trimmed off.
You can switch between a hyphen and an underscore, keep or drop numbers, and strip common stop words such as a, the, of and to. The length cap defaults to 60 characters and cuts at a separator rather than mid word, which keeps slugs readable in search results and in shared links. Slugs under about five words tend to be easier to type, quote and remember later.
How to use the Text to Slug
- Type or paste your heading into the first field.
- Pick a hyphen or an underscore and set the maximum length you want.
- Tick Strip stop words for shorter slugs, or leave it off to keep the full phrase.
- Copy the slug on its own, or copy the full URL built from your base address.
Frequently asked questions
Should I use hyphens or underscores?
Use hyphens. Google has said for years that it treats a hyphen as a word separator and an underscore as a joiner, so red_shoes can be read as one token while red-shoes is read as two words. Underscores are still useful for file names and internal identifiers.
Is it safe to strip stop words?
Usually yes for length, but read the result before you publish. Removing the from how the algorithm works still reads fine, while removing to from how to bake bread changes the meaning. The option is off by default for that reason.
How are accented characters handled?
The text is normalised to NFD form, which splits a letter from its accent mark, then the marks are removed. Characters that do not decompose, such as the German sharp s, the Nordic slashed o and the ligature ae, are mapped by hand to ss, o and ae.
Can I change a slug after publishing?
You can, but add a 301 redirect from the old address to the new one. Without it you lose any links and rankings the old URL earned, and anyone who bookmarked it hits a 404. If the page is only days old with no external links, the risk is small.