Strikethrough Text Generator

What Is Strikethrough Unicode Text?

The line is a combining character — U+0336, the combining long stroke overlay — placed after each supported letter. Because it combines with the letter instead of being drawn by an editor, the strike travels with the text: copy the result and the line goes with it into any field that accepts Unicode.

That also explains the style’s texture: the strike applies per character rather than as one continuous line across the whole word, so the visual result is a series of short strokes. It is a close cousin of the native strikethrough in a word processor, but it works in plain-text fields that offer no formatting toolbar.

A practical detail that makes the style usable: spaces between words stay clean, because the stroke attaches to letters and pauses where the word pauses. That matches how readers expect a crossed-out phrase to look, which is why the Unicode version reads naturally despite being assembled character by character.

Why Use Strikethrough on Social Media?

Strikethrough is the punctuation of self-correction: it lets a caption show the thought process — the wrong guess crossed out, the joke walked back, the price “was” before it became “now”. Before-and-after captions and humorous corrections are the classic uses, because the crossed-out text says what the writer almost said.

It is also a practical formatting tool in apps without rich text. A lightweight to-do list can cross out completed items, a note can mark text as deprecated, and a draft can flag a line for deletion without losing the words. In each case the strike preserves the original text while changing its status, which plain deletion cannot do.

Where Strikethrough Works

Unicode strikethrough renders in Instagram bios and captions, WhatsApp messages, and most chat apps, which makes it the portable fallback when a platform offers no native option. Discord is the special case: Discord supports its own Markdown strikethrough, written as two tildes on each side — ~~text~~ — which renders as a cleaner native line and is the better choice inside Discord.

The general rule: use the platform’s native syntax when it exists, and fall back to the Unicode characters everywhere else. Native strikethrough is easier for screen readers and always renders correctly; the Unicode version is for fields where Markdown is not available.

When in doubt, test the native option first and the Unicode fallback second. Most people only ever need the Unicode version for the handful of apps — Instagram, WhatsApp — that offer no text formatting at all.