Slug Generator

What this tool changes—and what it leaves alone

A URL slug is the readable part of a path, such as summer-color-guide in /blog/summer-color-guide. Paste a heading above to get a lowercase segment with one hyphen between surviving groups of letters or numbers. Spaces, punctuation, emoji, underscores, and slashes become separators; leading and trailing separators disappear. This is useful when a CMS asks for a path name and you want a predictable result without inventing a naming rule every time. It is not a full URL builder: do not paste a domain, query string, fragment, or entire existing link and assume its structure will survive.

The distinctive choice here is explicit rather than hidden. With the default Unicode mode, letters from many writing systems remain in the result. With ASCII enabled, supported Latin characters are folded into plain letters where possible; other scripts are not silently presented as an English translation. You see the generated value before copying it, and the field warns when ASCII would drop non-Latin letters, even if digits still produce a nonempty result. The text is processed in this browser: the conversion does not require an account or an upload to a slug API. Later use of the copied result follows your CMS and web server’s own logging and publishing behavior.

Choosing Unicode or ASCII for a multilingual site

There is no universal rule that every path must be English. A page written for Chinese, Arabic, Greek, Japanese, or another audience may use a readable local-language segment if your publishing system, internal links, sitemap, redirects, and analytics handle it consistently. Browsers may show a readable Unicode path while a copied or logged URL uses percent encoding. That is normal URL representation, not a second page. Test the complete published link in a browser and in the CMS before deciding which form to use. Do not create one Unicode URL and a second ASCII URL for the same content unless you have deliberately chosen a canonical page and a redirect policy.

ASCII mode is most useful for Latin-based names when a downstream system prefers a narrower character set. It converts examples such as Café to cafe and Straße to strasse. It is not a transliteration service. Chinese characters do not turn into pinyin, Arabic does not become a Latin spelling, and Japanese does not become romaji. If a non-Latin title includes a year, ASCII may leave only that year. A short result can look valid while losing the subject entirely; read it before copying. If you need a Latin-language path for such a page, write an intentional human translation or transliteration first, then convert that wording.

Original test cases from this implementation

We ran the conversion function against twelve inputs in this project's local test environment on 7 October 2026. These are observed outputs of the current code, not examples copied from another site or promises about other slug libraries. The Unicode result is listed first and the ASCII result second. You can reproduce each case in the tool above.

• Café & Crème — 2026 → café-crème-2026 / cafe-creme-2026. Accents are preserved by default and folded in ASCII mode; the ampersand is a separator, not the word “and.”
• Straße & Æther → straße-æther / strasse-aether. The ASCII mappings for ß and Æ are explicit; they are not a generic translation engine.
• İstanbul 2026 → i̇stanbul-2026 / istanbul-2026. The default lowercase form contains a combining dot after i, an easy detail to miss when comparing strings by eye.
• 中文 标题 2026 → 中文-标题-2026 / 2026. The partial ASCII result is a warning sign, not a good descriptive path.
• مقال جديد 2026 → مقال-جديد-2026 / 2026. The same loss can occur with Arabic plus numbers.
• ภาษาไทย ทดสอบ → ภาษาไทย-ทดสอบ / an empty result. The tool separates the two supplied phrases at the existing space; it does not discover Thai word boundaries.
• 日本語の見出し → 日本語の見出し / an empty result. No automatic romanization is attempted.
• Launch 🚀 Ready → launch-ready in both modes. Emoji is removed rather than guessed as a word.
• á b, with a decomposed accent, → á-b / a-b. Normalization makes the composed and decomposed spellings behave alike for this case.
• 50% Off / Summer → 50-off-summer in both modes. A slash is not preserved as a second path segment.
• Αθήνα → αθήνα / an empty result. Greek letters are retained only in Unicode mode.
• foo___bar → foo-bar in both modes. Repeated separators collapse to one hyphen.

The table of cases above is intentionally more useful than a single polished demo: it exposes partial data loss, combining marks, scripts without spaces, and punctuation behavior that can otherwise surprise a publisher. The tool's text field caps input at 10,000 characters; this is an input safety limit, not a recommendation to make a path anywhere near that long.

Before publishing: six checks the converter cannot perform

1. Uniqueness: two distinct titles can produce the same result. “A & B” and “A / B” both lose their punctuation. Check your site's existing paths and add a meaningful qualifier when needed; a date or random suffix is not automatically the best answer.
2. Reserved routes: a CMS or framework may reserve admin, api, login, or another segment. This tool cannot know your router. Test the proposed path in the actual publishing environment.
3. Path length: keep the segment as short as it can be while still distinguishing the page. There is no magic character count that Google uses as a ranking threshold. Long headings can contain campaign words, dates, or repetition that do not help someone recognize the destination.
4. Stable links: changing an existing path can break bookmarks, backlinks, QR codes, and internal links. If you rename a published page, set a permanent redirect from the old URL to the new one, update internal links and sitemap entries, and keep one canonical destination.
5. Local meaning: removing accents or transliterating a name can alter spelling or meaning. Ask a fluent editor to approve important brand, place, and person names; keep the original script when that serves the reader better.
6. URL encoding: copy the path into your CMS as a segment, not into a query parameter or arbitrary file name. Confirm the resulting page loads, its canonical tag matches the chosen URL, and links to it use the same form.

SEO guidance without a ranking myth

A descriptive URL helps people and crawlers understand a page's destination, but a neat path alone cannot make thin content useful or guarantee search visibility. Google's Search Central guidance favors simple, descriptive words in URLs and hyphens to separate words. Its people-first content guidance asks whether a page helps a visitor accomplish a goal; it does not prescribe a word count or a keyword-density formula. For this page, the tool should work, explain its limits, and let a visitor decide whether the result is appropriate. Repeating the same phrase many times would add noise rather than clarity.

Use words a real visitor would recognize from the page title. Avoid stuffing unrelated search terms into a path or creating many near-identical path variants to target small keyword differences. Match the slug to the page's actual language and intent. Keep titles, page content, navigation, canonical links, and hreflang signals consistent with the URL you publish. If you choose an ASCII translation for a local-language article, that translation should be understandable to its audience, not an accidental residue after characters were removed.

Questions that matter in real publishing workflows

Should I include the date?

Include it when the date is part of the document's identity, such as a yearly report or an event edition. For an evergreen guide, adding a year can create unnecessary rename pressure. A title may change while the stable path stays the same; that is often better than moving a working URL for a cosmetic refresh.

Why did punctuation disappear?

The converter treats punctuation as boundaries because a path segment is not prose. It does not invent words for symbols: & does not become “and,” + does not become “plus,” and an emoji does not become its English name. If a symbol is essential to meaning, write the word yourself in the input and inspect the outcome.

Why is the copied URL different from what I see?

A browser or CMS can percent-encode Unicode characters or normalize a URL when displaying or copying it. Compare the destination after loading the link, not just the visual spelling of a pasted string. If the page redirects, check the final URL and canonical tag. Do not publish two accessible copies simply because one form is encoded.

Can I process private drafts?

The conversion runs in the current browser tab and does not send the input to a slug service. You still control where the result goes next: clipboard history, your CMS, analytics, and server logs may retain what you paste or publish. Avoid putting confidential text into a public URL, because URLs are commonly shared and logged.

Useful references: Google Search Central: URL structure and Google Search Central: creating helpful content. These explain broad search guidance; the conversion behavior and test cases above describe this particular tool.