Strikethrough Text: How to Cross Out Text on Any Platform

If your app supports markdown-style syntax, strikethrough is one shortcut away:

Docs and Word don't use markup — they apply real formatting. In Google Docs: Format → Text → Strikethrough (or Alt+Shift+5). In Word: Font dialog → Strikethrough, or the ribbon button. This is real text styling, not characters, so it stays inside the document.

Instagram, TikTok, and X have no strikethrough syntax — tildes would just show up literally. Instead, use Unicode combining strikethrough: add U+0336 (Combining Long Stroke Overlay) after every character, and you get s̶t̶r̶i̶k̶e̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶. The line is part of the text itself, so it shows up in bios, captions, display names — anywhere. It's the same family of trick as Invisible text, which uses similar Unicode to look like nothing at all.

Related marks in the same family: U+0335 (short stroke overlay), U+0337 and U+0338 (diagonal slashes), and U+0332 (combining underline). Our Font Generator's Symbol Text category builds these for you — type once, copy the struck version.

Markdown doesn't work in Discord display names, channel names, or statuses — ~~text~~ would show literally. Use the Unicode U+0336 method there instead. Rule of thumb: markdown for chat messages, Unicode combining marks for names and titles.

Each letter plus its mark counts as two characters — that matters against tight limits like Instagram's 150-character bio. Some fonts draw the line broken or offset instead of continuous, screen readers may read each letter oddly, and struck text can't be found with plain-text search. On very old devices the mark can detach and float as a stray line. For anything important, use the platform's native syntax instead of the Unicode trick.