Whale text art in keyboard characters, drawn for this page: 17 pieces, with whales spouting, smiling and diving, a whale with her calf, two leaping dolphins and a killer whale.
Read the full guide
Type on the spout
Whale spouting a message carries YOUR WORDS on top of its spout. Type over the 10 characters and keep the line centered over the three strokes that rise from the blowhole.
Dolphin text art and a killer whale
Dolphin leaping is an arched back with one fin, the beak leading; Dolphin over a wave adds two rows of sea. Killer whale, side view has a tall straight fin, a back of number signs and a pale eye patch.
Squash-proof has 6 pieces with no run of spaces: three one-liners, two small whales and a tail.
Big whale, grooved belly is 34 columns wide, the widest piece here.
Questions and answers
Is a killer whale a whale or a dolphin?
Both. Wikipedia's Orca article calls the orca, or killer whale, a toothed whale, the biggest of the oceanic dolphin family. So the killer whale text art here is filed with the dolphins.
How do you make an ASCII whale on one line?
Type two tildes, a closing brace and an equals sign for the tail, then (______o) and two more tildes: ~~}=(______o)~~ is a whale in the water, 15 characters long.
Is this a whale made with keyboard symbols only?
Yes. Every piece uses printable ASCII characters alone: parentheses, slashes, underscores, periods, tildes and a letter o for the eye. No emoji and no special symbol is in any of them.
What is the biggest whale here?
Big whale, grooved belly: 10 lines and 34 columns, with eleven grooves under the chin. Whale blowing a spout is 27 columns wide.
All 17 pieces
Your own words 1
Whale spouting a messageThe words ride on top of the spout. Type over YOUR WORDS, 10 characters, and keep the line centered over the blowhole. 8 lines, 27 wide.
One line 3
Dolphin on one lineA tail, a back with one upright fin, an eye and a beak of an equals sign and a hyphen. 1 line, 13 wide.
Whale on one lineA tail fluke, a long body with one eye, and two tildes of water at each end. 1 line, 15 wide.
Whale tail on one lineTwo flukes meeting at a capital Y, with four tildes of water either side. 1 line, 15 wide.
Small, 2 to 4 lines 5
Small whaleA whale facing right with its tail fluke at the left and a spout of three marks. 4 lines, 15 wide.
Small whale tailTwo rounded flukes going under a line of tildes. 3 lines, 9 wide.
Squash-proof whaleThe small whale with periods for every gap. 3 lines, 13 wide.
Squash-proof whale tailTwo flukes over a line of tildes, the gaps filled with periods. 3 lines, 9 wide.
Squash-proof whale, spoutThe squash-proof whale with a spout of three marks over its back. 4 lines, 13 wide.
Show all 17 pieces (8 more)
Medium, 5 to 9 lines 7
Dolphin leapingA dolphin in the middle of a jump: an arched back with a fin on top, the beak leading and the tail trailing. 5 lines, 20 wide.
Dolphin over a waveThe leaping dolphin above two rows of sea drawn in tildes and hyphens. 7 lines, 22 wide.
Killer whale, side viewA tall straight fin, a back filled with number signs and a pale oval eye patch. 6 lines, 25 wide.
Whale and calfA whale with a smaller one swimming below and just ahead of it. 5 lines, 30 wide.
Whale blowing a spoutA stout whale facing right: flukes up at the left, an eye and a short mouth, and a spout of three drops. 7 lines, 27 wide.
Whale smilingThe stout whale without a spout, its eye a caret. 5 lines, 27 wide.
Whale tail and splashA wide tail standing out of the water, with a drop flying off each side. 6 lines, 17 wide.
Large, 10 lines and up 1
Big whale, grooved bellyThe largest whale: a spout three rows tall, a long mouth line and eleven grooves under the chin. 10 lines, 34 wide.
How this list was compiled: Own work: every piece was drawn for this page on 2026-10-03, rendered in a monospaced font and looked at; none is copied from an archive or another site, and nothing from a named show, book, film or game is drawn. The whales share one construction of this site's own: a stout body facing right, a tail with two flukes raised at the left, one eye and a short mouth, with the spout drawn as drops over the back. The dolphins are an arched back with one fin, and the killer whale has a tall straight fin, a back filled with number signs and a pale eye patch. One fact on the page was read on 2026-10-03 in Wikipedia's article Orca (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca, CC BY-SA 4.0): the orca, also called killer whale, is a toothed whale, the biggest of the oceanic dolphin family, mostly black on top and white on the bottom, with white eye patches. Every character is one of the 95 printable ASCII characters, U+0020 to U+007E. Squash-proof means no line starts with a space and no two spaces touch. The comment box badge means at most 8 lines and 30 columns: a rule of thumb of this site, not a promise about any app. Licence: own work