Example
Sunset drive 1986
Ｓｕｎｓｅｔ ｄｒｉｖｅ １９８６
How it works
Each character is replaced with its full-width form, originally designed so Latin letters line up with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters. Spaces become the full-width ideographic space.
Things to know
Screen readers may read these characters oddly or skip them, and search engines don’t treat them as ordinary words. Use them for a word or two of emphasis, not for whole posts, usernames you want people to search for, or anything that needs to be accessible.
The vaporwave look
Wide text became the signature of vaporwave, an internet music and art style from the early 2010s that played with 1980s and 1990s nostalgia: pastel gradients, old computer graphics, and Japanese text. Today it’s used for usernames, playlist names, and captions with a retro or dreamy mood.
Where full-width characters come from
In Chinese, Japanese, and Korean text every character fills the same square space. Full-width Latin letters and digits (U+FF01 to U+FF5E) were created so Western characters could line up in that grid. They are standard characters supported by nearly every device.