Strikethrough Text Generator

Strikethrough text is created by overlaying a horizontal or diagonal line across each character, producing the visual effect of text that has been crossed out, deleted, or redacted. In web development and word processors, strikethrough is typically applied with HTML tags like <del> or <s>, or with CSS text-decoration: line-through. But those approaches only work inside rich-text environments. When you need crossed-out text in a plain-text context -- a social media bio, a chat message, a forum comment -- you need Unicode combining characters.

Unicode provides three distinct combining characters that produce strikethrough effects, each with its own visual personality. U+0336 (Combining Long Stroke Overlay) draws a full-width horizontal line through the center of the character it follows. This is the classic single strikethrough that most people recognize from document editing -- a clean, authoritative deletion mark. U+0335 (Combining Short Stroke Overlay) draws a shorter centered crossbar, producing a subtler, less aggressive crossed-out appearance. U+0338 (Combining Long Solidus Overlay) draws a diagonal slash from bottom-left to top-right through each character, creating a dramatic slash-through effect reminiscent of mathematical negation symbols like the "not equal" sign.

The mechanism behind all three is the same: combining characters. In Unicode, a combining character is a code point that does not stand on its own but instead modifies the character that immediately precedes it. When a text renderer encounters the sequence "H" followed by U+0336, it draws the letter H first, then overlays a horizontal stroke through it, producing "H̶". This process repeats for every character in the input. Spaces are left untouched because a line through empty space would be visually meaningless.

What distinguishes Unicode strikethrough from platform-specific markdown shortcuts is universality. WhatsApp interprets text wrapped in tildes (~like this~) as strikethrough, and Discord uses double tildes (~~like this~~). But those are app-specific rendering rules -- paste the same tilde-wrapped text into an email or an Instagram caption and you will see raw tildes, not crossed-out text. Unicode combining characters, by contrast, are part of the text itself. The strikethrough travels with the characters wherever they go. Every platform, every browser, every operating system that supports Unicode (which is effectively all of them) will render the line overlay. This makes Unicode strikethrough the only reliable way to cross out text in contexts where you have no control over the rendering engine.

Common use cases include indicating corrections without deleting the original text, creating humorous "deleted" commentary on social media, showing price reductions (crossing out the old price), and adding dramatic emphasis. The slash-through variant is particularly popular in gaming communities and edgy aesthetic bios, while single strikethrough remains the standard for editorial and professional contexts.