Strikethrough Text Generator
Generate strikethrough text using Unicode combining characters. Free strikethrough text generator — copy and paste s̶t̶r̶u̶c̶k̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ text anywhere. No signup needed.
Free Strikethrough Text Generator — Create Struck-Through Text for Social Media and Messaging
Strikethrough text — text with a horizontal line drawn through it — is a classic typographic device traditionally used to show that something has been deleted, corrected, or intentionally crossed out while preserving visibility of the original. In word processors and HTML, strikethrough is a simple formatting toggle. In plain text contexts like social media captions, Twitter posts, Discord messages, and other platforms that do not support rich text formatting, creating strikethrough text requires a Unicode trick. Our free strikethrough text generator applies a Unicode combining overlay character to every letter, producing struck-through text that can be copied and pasted anywhere Unicode renders.
How Unicode Strikethrough Works
Unicode includes a set of "combining characters" — characters with no visible glyph of their own, but which modify the appearance of the character that precedes them. The combining long stroke overlay (Unicode U+0336) draws a horizontal line through the preceding character when rendered. By inserting this invisible combining character after every regular character in a string, each character gains a horizontal stroke overlay — producing the strikethrough visual effect without using any HTML tags, Markdown syntax, or formatting commands.
The result is technically plain text: a sequence of alternating regular characters and combining characters. Any application that renders Unicode text will display the combining strokes and show the text with strikethrough. Applications that handle text as raw bytes without Unicode rendering (older or stripped-down text processors, some database clients, certain log viewers) may display the combining characters as separate symbols or question marks rather than rendering them as overlays, but this is rare in modern software.
Social Media and Messaging Uses
The most common creative use of strikethrough text on social media is the humor or sarcasm format where a statement is written and then "corrected" in a way that makes the original visible: "I definitely didn't eat the whole pizza ~~half~~ s̶t̶r̶i̶k̶e̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ most of it." The format shows an ostensibly reconsidered statement alongside the "crossed out" original, creating a comedic layer where the crossed-out text is actually the more honest or funnier version.
Twitter users employ strikethrough text for this sarcasm-and-correction humor format, for showing price reductions ("Was $99 now $49"), and for mock self-censorship effects where the crossed-out text draws more attention than plain text would. Instagram captions and LinkedIn posts use similar patterns. The fact that the strikethrough text is generated through a Unicode trick rather than native formatting means it works in all these contexts without any platform-specific markup.
Discord has native Markdown strikethrough (using ~~tildes~~) that produces cleaner strikethrough in that specific platform. Our Unicode generator produces strikethrough that works across all platforms simultaneously, making it useful for text that will be shared across multiple platforms from the same source — or for contexts outside Discord where the tilde syntax does not apply.
Showing Corrections and Revisions
The traditional meaning of strikethrough in formal writing is "this text was here and has been removed or superseded." Legal documents and academic papers use strikethrough when showing amendments or corrections to existing text — the crossed-out original remains visible to demonstrate what changed. In digital contexts without rich text formatting, Unicode strikethrough preserves this semantic meaning in plain text form.
Version histories, change logs, and collaborative notes sometimes need to show previous values alongside current ones to communicate what was changed. A configuration change that sets a value from 100 to 200 might be communicated as "timeout: s̶1̶0̶0̶ 200" — the strikethrough shows the old value clearly while making the new value the visually dominant one. This communication pattern works in plain text channels, support tickets, and any other context where rich text is unavailable.
Combining with Other Text Effects
Strikethrough text can be combined with bold Unicode text, small text, and other Unicode text styling effects by applying multiple Unicode modifications to the same text. Text that is both bolded and struck through creates a strong visual emphasis on the crossed-out element. Text that appears in small size with strikethrough creates a footnote-like appearance. These combinations are possible because Unicode combining characters work independently of whatever Unicode letter variant is being used as the base character.