Strikethrough Text: How to Cross Out Text on Every Platform

In the world of writing, editing, and content creation, how we display text has deep psychological meaning. Sometimes, you don't just want to write words—you want to show that a word has been deleted, corrected, or humorously reconsidered. The typographical style used to draw a horizontal line right through the center of your characters is known as strikethrough (or strike through).

But if you are typing a caption on Instagram, writing a post on Twitter/X, or drafting a comment in a forum, you might wonder: how do you cross out text when there is no formatting ribbon?

In this comprehensive, in-depth guide, we will explore the history and psychology of crossed out text, walk through step-by-step tutorials to type it in major apps (like Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and Slack), show how to write it in HTML and Markdown, explain the science of Unicode combining characters, and show you how to use an online strikethrough text generator to copy and paste crossed-out text anywhere.

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What Is Strikethrough Text?

A strikethrough is a typographical presentation where a thin horizontal line is drawn directly through the middle of the letters (e.g., deleted text).

In traditional print editing and legal proofreading, drawing a line through a word was a crucial way to indicate that a passage was slated for deletion while keeping the original text legible for authors and typesetters.

Today, in the digital era, crossed out text serves several unique creative and functional purposes:

• E-Commerce and Sales: Emphasizing original prices vs. discount prices (e.g., "Regular Price: $99.99 - Now Only $49.99!").
• Humor and Sarcasm: Revealing internal thoughts or making corrections (e.g., "I spent the weekend doing extremely productive work sleeping for 14 hours.").
• To-Do Lists: Visually crossing off completed tasks on a daily roster.
• Editorial Corrections: Indicating revisions in journalism without hiding the original statement, promoting transparency.

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How to Cross Out Text in Daily Applications (Word, Docs, Slack, WhatsApp)

Word processors, chat clients, and email apps all handle formatting differently. Here is how to cross out text inside the most popular daily applications:

1. Microsoft Word

• Windows Keyboard Shortcut: Highlight the text you want to cross out, then press Alt + H, then 4 (releases the ribbon path).
• Alternative Numpad Shortcut: Select your text and press Ctrl + D to open the Font Dialog, check the Strikethrough box (or Double strikethrough), and click OK.
• Mac Keyboard Shortcut: Select your text and press Cmd + Shift + X.

2. Google Docs

• Windows Keyboard Shortcut: Highlight your text and press Alt + Shift + 5.
• Mac Keyboard Shortcut: Highlight your text and press Cmd + Shift + X.
• Menu Path: Select text, click Format in the top menu bar, hover over Text, and click Strikethrough.

3. Slack

Slack uses a variation of markdown inside the chat box:

• The Shortcut: Wrap your text in tildes: ~your text here~. The Slack engine will instantly cross it out.
• The Toolbar: Highlight your text and click the Strikethrough icon (depicted as an 'S' with a horizontal line) in the formatting menu below the compose box.

4. WhatsApp

WhatsApp also uses character wrappers to format messages:

• The Shortcut: Wrap your text in tildes: ~your text here~. When you send the message, the tildes will disappear, and your text will render as crossed out.

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Unicode Strikethrough for Social Media (Copy & Paste)

If you try to post a strikethrough from Microsoft Word or a markdown draft onto a platform like Twitter/X, Instagram, or Facebook, the app will ignore the formatting and paste standard, unformatted text. This is because social media caption fields do not support standard formatting tags.

To display strikethrough text on social media, you must use Unicode Combining Diacritical Marks.

Unicode includes a specialized character called the Combining Long Stroke Overlay (U+0336). Unlike a standard letter which has its own spacing, a combining character is programmed to render directly on top of the character that immediately precedes it in the data stream.

For example, to render the crossed-out letter "s̶":

1. The computer reads the letter "s" (U+0073).
2. The computer reads the combining stroke character (U+0336).
3. The rendering engine draws a horizontal line directly over the "s".

Generating these combining characters manually is extremely difficult. That is why smart content creators use our online Strikethrough Text Generator. By typing your sentence into the converter, our script instantly interleaves U+0336 characters after every single letter, giving you a copy-pasteable asset that works perfectly across any social network or browser!

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Coding and Markup: Strikethrough in Markdown, HTML, and CSS

For web developers, software engineers, and blog writers, crossing out text is handled via standard code specifications:

1. Markdown Casing

In standard GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM), you cross out text by wrapping it in double tildes:

This is ~~old text~~ new text.

2. HTML5 Semantic Markers

HTML provides two distinct elements for crossing out text, each serving a separate semantic purpose:

• The <del> Tag: Represents text that has been deleted from a document. Search engines and screen readers treat this as a formal document revision.
• The <s> Tag: Represents text that is no longer accurate or relevant but has not been formally deleted (excellent for humor or pricing).
• The <strike> Tag: A legacy HTML element that is deprecated in modern HTML5. Developers should avoid using <strike> and use <s> or <del> instead.

<!-- HTML Example -->
<p>Regular Price: <s>$99.00</s> - Now only $49.00!</p>
<p>The meeting is scheduled for <del>Monday</del> Tuesday.</p>

3. CSS Styling

If you want to apply a strikethrough style using CSS, use the text-decoration property:

.crossed-out-style {
    text-decoration: line-through;
    text-decoration-color: red; /* Custom line color! */
}

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The Legal and Historical Heritage of Strikethrough Formatting

Before the invention of screen-based word processors and collaborative tracking tools, editorial revision was a tactile, highly formalized art. In the fields of legal drafting, historical bookkeeping, and physical printing press preparation, the practice of strikethrough served as a vital mechanism for procedural transparency.

The Preservative Function of the Crossed Line

In modern computer editing, if you make a mistake, you simply hit backspace, deleting the characters completely from memory. However, in legal deeds, real estate contracts, and financial ledgers, deleting text permanently was highly problematic—it could indicate fraudulent alteration or hide critical negotiations.

To maintain administrative integrity, legal scribes used a physical strikethrough. By drawing a single horizontal ink stroke through a word, they signaled to all parties that a clause was nullified while preserving the original wording underneath. This ensured:

• Auditability: Inspectors and judges could verify exactly what terms were originally proposed and subsequently amended.
• Contractual Clarity: Signatories could trace the historical evolution of an agreement directly on a single piece of parchment.
• Typesetting Coordination: In printing houses, physical proofreaders used standardized red ink marks to tell the lead-type setters which blocks of characters to remove before locking the final printing chase.

Furthermore, in royal chanceries and court registries, a strikethrough was structurally distinguished from a complete "erasure" or "expungement". While an expunged clause was scraped off the animal-skin parchment entirely with a sharp knife to completely obliterate it, a simple strikethrough allowed the text to remain part of the historical and archival record. This preservation of overwritten thoughts is why historians today can trace the complex philosophical development of early democratic constitutions, as the authors' crossed-out edits remain fully legible in the original drafts.

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Technical Mechanics: How Operating Systems Render Combining Strokes

For programmers, software engineers, and web development teams, styling text with a horizontal line on plain-text platforms represents a fascinating excursion into the depths of Unicode rendering architecture.

Unlike rich-text word processors (which instruct the graphics engine to draw a vector line path over a standard text box), plain-text social networks rely strictly on character mapping.

The Chemistry of Combining Characters

In Unicode, standard English letters are classified as spacing characters—each character occupies its own horizontal bounding box and advances the cursor to the right. However, the combining long stroke overlay (U+0336) is a non-spacing diacritical character.

When a modern rendering engine (such as Apple's CoreText, Microsoft's DirectWrite, or the open-source HarfBuzz library) parses a string containing U+0336, it executes a complex layout sequence:

1. Character Identification: The layout processor identifies the base character (e.g., the letter "a" at U+0061) and calculates its glyph metrics (advance width, height, and ascender line).
2. Overlay Offsets: The engine reads the subsequent combining mark (U+0336) and retrieves its specialized glyph anchor points from the active system font file.
3. Dynamic Composition: Rather than advancing the rendering cursor to the right, the graphics card shifts the coordinate system backwards and draws the horizontal strikethrough line directly across the visual center of the preceding letter, scaling the line dynamically based on the font weight.

Because this composition occurs in real time at the graphics level, minor layout bugs can occasionally arise on older Android or legacy Windows devices where fonts do not have correct anchoring vectors, resulting in the crossed line appearing off-center or clipping adjacent letters.

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Sarcastic Copywriting: How to Leverage Crossed-Out Text for Social Engagement

Beyond functional database fields and formal editorial reviews, the use of crossed out text has become one of the most prominent creative copywriting techniques across social networks like Twitter/X, LinkedIn, and TikTok.

In digital marketing, drawing a visual line through your text is a powerful way to inject brand voice and manage customer attention.

The Psychology of Sarcastic Reconsideration

When a reader encounters a crossed-out word, their brain is forced to perform a double-take. This typographical style acts as a visual representation of self-correction, letting copywriters display a humorous tension between what they are "supposed" to say and what they are actually thinking.

Here are three highly effective formulas to use in your social updates:

1. The Internal Thoughts Formula

• Concept: Write a highly polite, standard business update, but cross out your raw, unfiltered thoughts to create a relatable, casual connection with your audience.
• Example: I spent all morning preparing a comprehensive, high-level marketing report ~~scrolling on gaming feeds looking at memes~~ to present to our investors.

2. The Price Comparison Formula

• Concept: Visually highlight original pricing before revealing the discount. The high contrast of the strikethrough line makes the new price feel significantly more valuable.
• Example: Get our complete coding bootcamp series for ~~Regular Price: $499.00~~ **Now $19.00** during our spring sale!

3. The Rebranding Formula

• Concept: Illustrate organizational growth or project pivots by crossing out old paradigms next to new initiatives.
• Example: Our product development team is committed to delivering standard updates ~~building the future of automated text tools~~ that simplify your work.

For other clean font adjustments, you can also try our specialized Bold Text Generator to highlight critical headlines or hooks in your updates.

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