Overview
Introduction
Striking through text in a bio, username, or comment is normally impossible without Markdown or rich text support, which many plain-text fields don't offer.
Unicode's combining characters include a long stroke overlay mark that draws a line through whatever character comes before it, making a genuine plain-text strikethrough possible.
What Is Text Strikethrough Adder?
A generator that inserts the Unicode combining long stroke overlay character (U+0336) after every character in your text, producing a strikethrough look in plain text.
It runs entirely client-side as part of this site's String Tools collection, so nothing you paste is ever uploaded to a server.
How Text Strikethrough Adder Works
The tool walks through the input one character at a time and appends the combining long stroke overlay character after each one (skipping newlines, so the strikethrough doesn't visually run onto the next line), relying on the reader's text renderer to draw each mark through its preceding character.
The transformation happens synchronously in JavaScript the moment you type, with no network round trip involved.
When To Use Text Strikethrough Adder
Use it to cross out a word or phrase in a social media comment, caption, or chat message on a platform without Markdown or rich text support.
It's a fast way to get the effect without manually inserting a combining character after every letter.
Often used alongside Text Underliner and Zalgo Text Generator.
Features
Advantages
- Works in genuinely plain-text contexts with no Markdown or HTML support required.
- Applies to every character, not just letters, including digits and punctuation.
Limitations
- Rendering quality varies by font and platform; some renderers draw a smooth continuous line while others show visible gaps between characters.
- This is a novelty Unicode combining-mark effect, not real text formatting, and screen readers may read the combining marks aloud or skip them inconsistently, so it's best for informal captions rather than accessible body text.
Examples
Best Practices & Notes
Best Practices
- Test the result on your target platform before publishing, since combining-mark rendering quality varies noticeably between fonts.
- Use it for short crossed-out phrases rather than long passages, since dense combining marks can look cluttered.
Developer Notes
The mark is stored as a literal string constant containing the combining character itself (rather than a `String.fromCodePoint` call) purely for readability in the source; newlines are explicitly skipped in the character loop so a multi-line paste doesn't end up with a trailing combining mark attached to the line-break position.
Text Strikethrough Adder Use Cases
- Crossing out a word or phrase in a social media comment
- Marking a correction or joke in a caption without Markdown support
- Styling a chat message on a platform without rich text formatting
Common Mistakes
- Expecting a perfectly continuous line across every font; combining-mark rendering varies by platform.
- Using it for long passages, where dense combining marks reduce readability.
Tips
- Combine with the Text Underliner tool on different words for a mixed emphasis effect.