Strikethrough text generator
Turns your words into crossed-out or underlined text you can paste anywhere.
This strikethrough text generator turns anything you type into crossed-out text that survives copy and paste. It is not formatting and it is not an image — it is plain text with an extra invisible mark on every letter, so it works in bios, chats, comments and anywhere else that only accepts text.
Runs entirely in your browser. Your text is never uploaded — open DevTools, Network tab, and you will see zero requests while you use this tool.
How to use it
- Type or paste your words into the box.
- Press Strikethrough, or Underline for a line below instead.
- Press Copy.
- Paste it wherever you need it.
What this tool does
Unicode has a group of characters called combining marks. They have no width of their own; they attach to the character in front of them and draw on top of it. This tool inserts U+0336 COMBINING LONG STROKE OVERLAY after every character in your text. The underline button uses U+0332 COMBINING LOW LINE instead.
So no becomes n + U+0336 + o + U+0336, which displays as n̶o̶. The letters themselves are unchanged — a search for no may still match, and screen readers generally read the letters and ignore the marks.
Two consequences follow. First, the result is exactly twice as many characters as the input, which matters when you are pasting into a field with a character limit: ten struck-through characters cost twenty. Second, spaces get struck too, so the line runs continuously across the gaps between words. Some people prefer that, some do not; if you want gaps left clean, strike the words separately.
Examples
| Before | Strikethrough | Underline |
|---|---|---|
| sold out | s̶o̶l̶d̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ | s̲o̲l̲d̲ ̲o̲u̲t̲ |
| $49 | $̶4̶9̶ | $̲4̲9̲ |
| maybe | m̶a̶y̶b̶e̶ | m̲a̲y̲b̲e̲ |
A typical bio line: $̶4̶9̶ now $29 — this week only. The old price reads as struck through, the new one plain, all in a single text field with no formatting options available.
Where it works well: Instagram bios and captions, X posts and bios, TikTok bios, Discord, Telegram, YouTube comments and descriptions, most forums, email subject lines, spreadsheet cells and filenames.
Where it can look wrong: some older Android keyboards and fonts draw the stroke slightly offset, so the line sits high or low rather than through the middle. A few apps normalise pasted text and drop the combining marks entirely, leaving plain letters. Monospaced code editors sometimes render the mark as a separate box. Test once in the app you care about before building a whole post around it.
When you need it
- Showing a price reduction where the platform offers no formatting.
- Marking something as sold out, closed, cancelled or fully booked without deleting the line.
- The joke where you cross out what you really meant and write something politer after it.
- A visible to-do list in a bio or pinned message, with finished items struck through.
- Editing a shared document in a place with no track changes, so a removal is obvious rather than silent.
- Styling a username, a channel name or a game nickname.
The underline button covers the related case where you want emphasis rather than deletion — a heading inside a plain-text field, for instance.
Doing it without this tool
WhatsApp: wrap the text in tildes — ~like this~. It only works inside WhatsApp.
Discord and Slack: two tildes, ~~like this~~. Again, only inside those apps.
Word: Ctrl+D, tick Strikethrough. This is real formatting, so it disappears the moment you paste into a plain-text field.
Google Docs: Alt+Shift+5. Same limitation.
Excel: Ctrl+5 strikes the selected cells, for a to-do sheet.
HTML: <s>text</s> or <del>text</del>, if you control the page.
By hand: you can type the combining character yourself — on Linux, Ctrl+Shift+U then 336 — after every single letter. That works, and it is exactly what this page automates.
The difference is that all of the app-specific options are formatting, which is lost on copy. The Unicode approach travels with the text.
Tips for a clean result
Strike words, not whole lines. Because spaces are struck too, a long sentence turns into one unbroken rule across the screen and gets hard to read. Striking two or three words in the middle of a normal line reads much better.
Watch the character limit. The output is double the length of the input. A 150-character Instagram bio can hold only 75 struck-through characters, so plan for that before you write.
Do not strike a link. Combining marks inside a URL will usually stop it from being detected as a link at all, and if it is detected it may not resolve.
Avoid it in anything important. Screen readers handle combining marks inconsistently, and some read every mark aloud. Never use struck text where the meaning depends on being able to read it — put a plain-language note beside it instead.
Check before you commit. Paste one word into the target app first. It takes ten seconds and saves rewriting a whole bio when the font renders the stroke in the wrong place.
Privacy: your text never leaves your browser
The transformation is a single pass over your string in JavaScript, running on your device. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored, and nothing survives a page reload.
Many strikethrough sites are ad-heavy pages that post your input to a server for no reason at all. There is no reason to send a bio line anywhere just to add a line through it, so this page does not.
Related tools
Frequently asked questions
A Unicode combining mark, U+0336, is added after every character. It draws a line through the character in front of it while the text stays plain text.
Yes. Because the result is text rather than formatting, you can paste it into a bio, caption or comment and it keeps the line.
Yes. Each visible character carries an invisible mark, so ten characters become twenty against any platform limit.
A few fonts and older keyboards position the combining mark badly, and some apps strip combining marks from pasted text. Test in the target app first.
Sometimes. The underlying letters are unchanged, but many search functions compare exact strings and the extra marks break the match.
Word applies formatting, which is lost when you paste into a plain-text field. This changes the characters themselves, so the effect travels.
Use the browser undo shortcut in the box, or press Clear and paste the original text again.