What a strikethrough text alternative actually is
Unicode combining characters are a strikethrough text alternative: a generator appends an invisible overlay mark after every visible character, and your device draws a line straight through each glyph, so the crossed-out text survives copy and paste into any plain-text field. The Strikethrough Text tool uses this approach, so the result is not a font and not a formatting style — it is ordinary Unicode text with extra code points glued to the back of every letter, which is exactly why it lands intact in places that would strip a real line-through button. In practice, that means Twitter/X bios, Instagram captions, Discord usernames, Reddit comments and any plain-text form all accept the output the same way they accept regular letters, because to those systems it really is regular letters — just with extra invisible neighbours. Once you understand that distinction, every limitation and every strength of the approach falls into place: it works where formatting buttons do not, it does not work where the app aggressively filters unusual code points, and it carries zero semantic information because the line through the letters is drawn by the renderer, not stored as data.
Why built-in strikethrough fails in many places
Most word processors, spreadsheets and rich-text editors expose a strikethrough command, usually sitting under a "Format" menu or bound to a keyboard shortcut such as Alt+Shift+5 in Google Docs or Cmd+Shift+X on macOS. The trouble starts the moment you move outside that comfortable bubble. A social-media bio field is a single line of plain text with no toolbar. An Instagram caption accepts line breaks but no inline styling. A Discord server name is a string, not a document. A Reddit comment supports a limited flavour of Markdown, but many apps simply refuse to render a ~~strike~~ span, and some hand-rolled forums strip it server-side.
In every one of those cases the rich-text strikethrough is lost the moment you press paste, because the destination has no idea what to do with a styling attribute it does not understand. The visual hint vanishes, and you are left with the bare text. A Unicode overlay sidesteps the whole problem by carrying the "crossed-out" look inside the text itself, as code points rather than as metadata.
How Unicode combining overlays actually work
The mechanism is the same one that powers combining accents such as é or . The Unicode standard defines a block of "Combining Diacritical Marks" whose code points are non-spacing: when one of them follows a base character, the rendering engine stacks it on top of (or under) that base instead of taking up its own horizontal space. The standard overlay marks used for decorative strikes behave the same way — a special invisible character is appended after each visible character, and the device draws the corresponding line through the glyph to its left.
For example, the letters in abc each receive a U+0336 COMBINING LONG STROKE OVERLAY appended, producing a̶b̶c̶. Because every letter now has a sibling code point glued to it, the whole string is still plain Unicode text — the file contains no <s> tag, no text-decoration property, no font reference. It is just letters plus invisible marks, in that order, and copy and paste preserves that order.
The five styles the tool offers
The generator is not limited to a single look. Different overlay code points draw different lines, and the tool exposes five of them, each chosen for a slightly different visual feel. They are all applied the same way — one combining mark per visible character — and they are all copy-paste ready.
| Style | Code point | Official name | Visual effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strikethrough | U+0336 | Combining Long Stroke Overlay | A full-length horizontal line through the middle of each glyph — the classic look. |
| Short strike | U+0335 | Combining Short Stroke Overlay | A shorter, tighter overlay that hugs the centre of each letter. |
| Slash strike | U+0338 | Combining Long Solidus Overlay | A diagonal solidus drawn across each character, similar to a forward slash. |
| Underline | U+0332 | Combining Low Line | A horizontal line sitting beneath each character rather than through it. |
| Tilde strike | U+0334 | Combining Tilde Overlay | A wavy line stacked over each glyph. |
All five styles transform the text in your browser and present the result immediately, so you can compare looks before deciding which one fits the post.
How to cross out text with the tool
- Type or paste your text into the input box at the top of the Strikethrough Text page.
- Pick a style — strikethrough, short strike, slash, underline, or tilde — and watch the result update live below the input.
- Click Copy and paste the crossed-out text into any chat, bio, post or document.
That is the entire workflow. There is no upload, no account and no network round-trip, so the text you type never leaves your device. The transformation happens character by character in your own browser the instant you type, and the styled result is yours to copy with one click.
Three caveats worth knowing before you paste
This is a Unicode hack rather than real formatting, so it pays to be honest about its limits.
Accessibility. Screen readers ignore combining overlay marks and simply read the underlying letters, so anyone using assistive technology hears the plain text with no sense that it is crossed out. That makes strikethrough unsafe as the sole carrier of meaning: do not rely on it alone to mark something cancelled, to label an old versus new price, or to flag an option as wrong. Pair it with a clear word such as "cancelled", "old price" or "do not use" if the distinction matters.
Font and platform rendering. Whether the line sits neatly through the glyph or drifts a few pixels off-centre depends on the font your recipient's device chooses and on the platform itself. Most modern browsers, phones and chat apps stack the overlay cleanly, but a few older systems or unusual fonts may show the mark slightly misaligned or even render it as a placeholder box. Paste a short sample into the exact target field first if the post matters.
Aggressive text filters. Some platforms treat runs of unusual combining marks as spam or abuse signals and silently strip them, refuse the post, or flag the account. A quick test paste tells you everything you need to know before you commit to a longer passage.
When a built-in shortcut is the better choice
If your destination does support formatting, the keyboard shortcut or Markdown flavour it provides is almost always cleaner than Unicode overlays, because it stays editable, exports properly and remains accessible. A few common ones to keep within reach:
- Google Docs, Sheets and Slides: select the text and press Alt+Shift+5 on Windows or Cmd+Shift+X on macOS to toggle strikethrough.
- Microsoft Word and Outlook: the same Alt+Shift+5 / Cmd+Shift+X shortcuts apply, and the Home tab also has a strikethrough button (the abc with a line through it).
- Markdown and Reddit: wrap the text in double tildes, like ~~this is struck through~~, and a renderer that supports it will draw the line for you.
- Slack: select the text and use the formatting toolbar's strikethrough button, or wrap the message in single tildes to use Slack's own strikethrough syntax.
- HTML: wrap the text in <del>...</del> for semantic deletion or <s>...</s> for a generic line-through.
These are the right tool whenever the receiving app supports them. Unicode overlays are the right tool for every other case: the chat box with no toolbar, the bio field with one line, the username with a character limit, the form field that strips formatting on submit.
Stacking strikethrough with other Unicode overlays
Because each overlay is just another invisible code point, the same trick covers a whole family of cross-platform text styles. If you want to bold a bio, italicise a caption or switch to a decorative script in a Discord username, the underlying mechanism is identical: a generator appends a different set of Unicode code points so the styled text remains plain text. The Bold Text Generator alternative guide walks through that parallel approach in detail, and the same idea extends to italic, cursive and other decorative alphabets exposed across this site's text tools. Once you have used one overlay-based alternative, the rest of them feel familiar.
For a deeper look, see Text to Slug API Alternative: A Browser-Based Approach.