Why does the text in my diagram look wrong?

Short answer

Diagrams render with the system font stack, so labels in any language your device has fonts for come out correctly. When something really does break, it's usually the other problem: full-width punctuation in the code, which is a parse error rather than a rendering one.

It renders, it just looks cramped

Switch the theme. The strip above the preview has six, and several were tuned for dense CJK labels — weight, line height and contrast all differ from the default. Pro adds a custom primary color that generates a whole palette.

It errors on a line that looks fine

That's full-width punctuation. Characters like （）「」，： from a CJK keyboard look like their ASCII counterparts but aren't. The rule:

• Structural punctuation — node brackets, arrows, colons, commas — must be ASCII
• Inside a label, any punctuation is fine

So A[Order (with coupon)] with full-width parens inside the label is fine, while using full-width parens as the node delimiters is not.

Exported files

Word and PowerPoint exports embed the diagram as a bitmap, so the fonts are already baked in — the file looks the same on a machine that doesn't have them.

Try it

flowchart TD
    A[Submit request] --> B{Over 5,000?}
    B -- Yes --> C[Director approves]
    B -- No --> D[Manager approves]
    C --> E([Archive])
    D --> E

Related

• Themes and background
• What does Parse error mean?