What Is Strikethrough Text?
Strikethrough text appears with a horizontal line running through the centre of each letter, as if the text has been crossed out — l̶i̶k̶e̶ t̶h̶i̶s̶. It is commonly used to show a correction, indicate deleted content, express irony, or create a comedic "changed my mind" effect in social media posts.
The plain-text version of strikethrough — the kind that pastes into Instagram bios, Discord messages, Twitter, and WhatsApp — is created using Unicode combining characters, specifically U+0336 (Combining Long Stroke Overlay). These invisible characters attach to each visible letter and instruct the rendering engine to draw a line through it. The result is real Unicode text, not an image or styled HTML.
HTML and markdown also support strikethrough: the HTML tag is <s> or <del>, and in many markdown implementations, surrounding text with ~~double tildes~~ produces a strikethrough. However, these methods only work inside HTML documents or apps that render markdown — they do not paste as crossed-out text into social media fields. Only the Unicode combining character method works universally.
How Strikethrough Text Works
Unicode defines a category of combining characters — code points that have no visual form of their own but modify the preceding character. U+0336, Combining Long Stroke Overlay, draws a horizontal line through whatever character precedes it. To create strikethrough text, a generator inserts U+0336 after every visible character in the input. The output looks crossed out but remains plain text.
Some platforms apply their own markdown-style strikethrough: Discord renders ~~text~~ as crossed out within chat messages, and Slack does the same. But these are platform-specific rendering rules — copy that text out of Discord and paste it elsewhere, and the tildes appear literally. The Unicode combining character method works across all platforms because the strikethrough is embedded in the character sequence itself.
Examples of Strikethrough Text
- T̶h̶i̶s̶ t̶e̶x̶t̶ i̶s̶ s̶t̶r̶u̶c̶k̶ t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶
- I c̶h̶a̶n̶g̶e̶d̶ m̶y̶ m̶i̶n̶d̶ updated my answer
- Price: $̶1̶0̶0̶ $49 (sale pricing with crossed-out original)
- My p̶l̶a̶n̶s̶ schedule for today
Where Is Strikethrough Text Used?
- Social media humor: crossed-out text in captions signals a joke correction or ironic "what I meant to say" punchline
- Showing edits publicly: writers use strikethrough in posts to show they changed their mind while preserving the original
- Instagram bios: combining strikethrough with regular text creates a stylised bio with visual contrast
- Discord and chat: strikethrough adds comedic tone to messages and indicates retracted statements
- Content editing: in documents, strikethrough marks text for deletion without removing it, preserving the edit history visually