Strikethrough Text Generator

How This Strikethrough Text Works

This tool doesn't apply text formatting the way a word processor's strikethrough button does — it inserts an actual Unicode character, U+0336 (Combining Long Stroke Overlay), immediately after every character you type. A combining character attaches visually to the character before it, so the result reads as struck-through text everywhere plain Unicode is displayed, with no rich-text support required at all.

Why This Works in Places Rich-Text Formatting Doesn't

Most bio fields, chat inputs, and comment boxes accept plain text only — they strip HTML tags and ignore markdown, so a normal strikethrough (like a `<s>` tag or `~~text~~`) either does nothing or shows up as literal symbol characters. Because this tool's strikethrough is made of ordinary Unicode text rather than formatting instructions, it survives being pasted into exactly those plain-text-only fields.

Worked Example

Typing "hello" inserts the combining stroke character after each of the 5 letters, producing 10 characters total (5 visible letters + 5 invisible combining marks) that render on screen as a single struck-through word. Copy-pasting that result elsewhere carries all 10 characters along, so the strikethrough travels with the text rather than being a display-only effect.

A Brief History of the Combining Stroke Character

Combining characters have been part of Unicode since its first release in 1991, which already defined 66 of them under the working name "Generic Diacritical Marks." The entire mechanism exists to let a single base letter carry an accent, umlaut, tilde, or other mark without needing a separate, pre-composed code point for every possible letter-plus-accent combination a language might ever need. The specific character this tool uses, U+0336 Combining Long Stroke Overlay, was added two years later, in Unicode 1.1 (1993), as part of that same Combining Diacritical Marks block.

Its intended job has nothing to do with crossing out whole sentences. Linguists use it to mark a single "barred" letter in phonetic transcription — a barred i, for instance, representing a particular vowel sound distinct from a plain i. Applying the mark after every character in a string, so the stroke chains together into what reads as one continuous line through an entire word or sentence, is a repurposing of the character with nothing to do with its original linguistic role. It works only because Unicode never restricts how many times or where a combining character can be used — just what it visually attaches to.

Common Strikethrough Text Mistakes

Assuming the strikethrough is a font style is the most common misconception — since it's a real character in the text itself, it displays consistently regardless of the receiving app's font, and can't be toggled off by the reader. A less obvious pitfall: some platforms run their own text sanitization and may strip unusual combining characters during input validation, which isn't a limitation of the text itself — the same string pastes correctly in most other apps.

Strikethrough Terms You Should Know

Combining Character — a Unicode character that modifies the character before it rather than standing alone, such as accents, umlauts, and this overlay stroke.

Code Point — the unique number Unicode assigns to every character, including U+0336, the combining stroke this tool inserts.

Rich Text — text with formatting instructions (bold, italic, strikethrough) layered on top, as opposed to plain text, which carries no formatting metadata at all.