What Is a URL Slug? How to Create a Clean, Descriptive Slug

A URL slug is the readable, page-specific part of a URL path. In /tools/word-counter/, word-counter is the slug.

Start with the page you mean to publish

A useful slug should remain understandable after a title is compressed into URL-oriented text. Google Search Central recommends simple, descriptive URLs with readable words and the language of your audience when practical.

What Mycelgrid Slug Generator changes

The Tool trims the working input and, with its default options, performs bounded accent normalization, lowercases text, deletes apostrophes/backticks, converts & to and, replaces other disallowed punctuation with spaces, tokenizes on spaces/hyphens/underscores, and rejoins tokens with hyphens.

The source stays separate from the generated result.

Hyphens are the public-URL default

Mycelgrid offers hyphens and underscores. Google Search Central currently recommends hyphens rather than underscores for separating words in public URLs. The Tool’s underscore option remains useful for systems with other conventions.

Lowercase is a consistency choice

Lowercase conversion is enabled by default. Google notes that URL handling is case-sensitive. Mycelgrid uses toLocaleLowerCase() without a fixed locale, so identical conversion across every locale/runtime is not guaranteed.

Accent normalization is not universal transliteration

When enabled, the Tool applies Unicode NFD normalization and removes combining marks U+0300–U+036F. This can simplify many accented Latin letters, but it is not a general transliteration engine. Review multilingual output before use.

Stop-word removal is optional

The Tool can remove a small built-in English list. The option is disabled by default and should be treated as a mechanical choice, not a universal SEO rule.

Maximum length is a hard cut

A positive limit uses JavaScript .slice() and is not word-aware or meaning-aware. Review a truncated result and rewrite it if clarity is damaged.

A generated slug is still a candidate

Check clarity, site conventions, normalization effects, route availability, and any redirect/link implications before publishing. Mycelgrid does not perform those publishing checks.

Continue: use Slug Generator for mechanical conversion, then read Hyphens vs Underscores in URLs: Which Should You Use? when separator choice is the question.