Cross out text
anywhere with instant Unicode formatting.

To strikethrough text in Google Docs on a desktop browser:

1. Highlight the text you want to cross out.
2. Press the keyboard shortcut: Alt + Shift + 5 on Windows or Chromebook, or ⌘ + Shift + X on macOS.
3. Alternatively, click Format in the top menu, select Text, and choose Strikethrough.

There are three primary ways to strikethrough text depending on where you are typing:

• Universal Online Generator: Type your words into our strikethrough text tool above, click Copy, and paste the Unicode characters anywhere (works in social media bios, nicknames, and web forms).
• Software Keyboard Shortcuts: Press Ctrl + 5 in Excel, Alt + Shift + 5 in Google Docs, or Ctrl + D then Alt + K in Word.
• Markdown & Code: Surround your text with double tildes like ~~text~~ in Discord, Reddit, or Slack, or use HTML <del> tags.

In Microsoft Excel for Windows:

1. Select the cell or highlight specific text inside the formula bar.
2. Press Ctrl + 5 (or ⌘ + Shift + X on macOS) to instantly toggle strikethrough on and off.
3. To use the menu: Press Ctrl + 1 to open the Format Cells dialog, navigate to the Font tab, check the Strikethrough checkbox under Effects, and click OK.

You can cross out text in Google Docs across desktop and mobile devices:

• Desktop Shortcut: Highlight your text and press Alt + Shift + 5 on Windows or ⌘ + Shift + X on Mac.
• Google Docs Mobile App (iOS / Android): Select the text, tap the Format (A) icon in the top toolbar, select the Text tab, and tap the strikethrough symbol (S̶).
• Menu Navigation: Click Format > Text > Strikethrough from the upper toolbar.

In Discord chat messages:

1. Type two tildes (~~) before and after your phrase, like ~~your message~~.
2. Press Enter to send. Discord renders the text as crossed out: your message.
3. On Discord desktop, you can also highlight your text in the chat input box to trigger the floating formatting pop-up bar and click the strikethrough icon.

To cross out text on Discord mobile (iOS or Android):

1. Tap the message bar and switch your mobile keyboard to the numbers and symbols screen.
2. Type two tilde symbols (~~) immediately before your text and two tildes immediately after: ~~crossed out on mobile~~.
3. Make sure there are no spaces between the tildes and the adjacent characters. Tap send to publish your crossed-out message.

Discord uses a modified Markdown parser for text styling:

• Standard Strikethrough: ~~strikethrough~~
• Bold + Strikethrough: **~~bold strike~~**
• Italic + Strikethrough: *~~italic strike~~*
• Escaping Tildes: If you want literal tildes without formatting, place a backslash in front: ~~normal text~~.

To make strikethrough text that you can copy and paste anywhere:

1. Type or paste your content into our generator input box at the top of this page.
2. Choose your preferred style (Standard Strikethrough, Slash Strikethrough, Underline, Double Underline, Dotted, or Wavy).
3. Enable or disable the Cross-out spaces toggle based on whether you want whitespace struck through.
4. Click Copy to copy the generated Unicode characters to your clipboard.

In Microsoft Word:

• Ribbon Icon: Highlight your text, open the Home tab, and click the Strikethrough icon (ab) in the Font group.
• Windows Shortcut: Highlight text, press Ctrl + D to open Font properties, press Alt + K to toggle Strikethrough, and press Enter.
• Mac Shortcut: Highlight your text and press ⌘ + Shift + X.
• Double Strikethrough: In the Font dialog (Ctrl + D), check Double strikethrough (Alt + L) for legal redlining.

If you are using Excel Online (Web Browser) or Microsoft 365:

1. Click the target cell or highlight text within the cell editor.
2. Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + 5 on Windows/ChromeOS or ⌘ + Shift + X on Mac.
3. Or click the Home tab on the ribbon, click the three dots (...) in the Font group for More Font Options, and select Strikethrough.

To cross out text in Discord where Markdown syntax (~~) is disabled:

Discord explicitly turns off Markdown formatting inside server nicknames, channel descriptions, role titles, and user custom statuses.

To get crossed-out text in those places, generate Unicode strikethrough using our tool above, copy the result (D̶i̶s̶c̶o̶r̶d̶), and paste it directly into your Discord Profile Settings or Server Nickname box.

Crossing out text (drawing a horizontal line through words) can be done in three ways:

1. Copy-Paste Generator: Enter your text into our tool above to create crossed-out Unicode characters that work anywhere online.
2. Document Applications: Use shortcuts like Ctrl + 5 in Excel, Alt + Shift + 5 in Google Docs, or the ab icon in Word.
3. Social & Chat Apps: Use Markdown tags like ~~message~~ on Discord, Reddit, and WhatsApp (~single tildes~).

To cross out text in Discord:

1. Open any Discord direct message or server text channel.
2. Type two tildes, your words, and two closing tildes: ~~completed quest~~.
3. Hit Enter. Discord immediately displays the line through the middle of the words: completed quest.
4. For multi-line messages, wrap each individual paragraph in double tildes for proper rendering.

In Discord chat, type ~~your text~~.

If you are configuring Discord bot webhooks, forum thread titles, or rich embed descriptions where native markdown can sometimes fail or render inconsistently across desktop and mobile, copy and paste pre-compiled Unicode strikethrough text from this tool for guaranteed 100% cross-platform display.

In Discord, put two tildes before and after the text: ~~like this~~.

If your tildes aren't crossing out your text, check these common fixes:

• No spaces inside: ~~ wrong ~~ fails; use ~~right~~.
• Not inside code blocks: Text inside backticks (`~~text~~`) will show literal tildes instead of formatting.
• Fall back to Unicode: If the channel restricts formatting, copy Unicode text from our generator and paste it directly.

To cross out text in Google Docs:

• Manual Shortcut: Highlight the target words and press Alt + Shift + 5 on Windows or ⌘ + Shift + X on Mac.
• Track Changes / Suggesting Mode: Switch the top-right pen icon from Editing to Suggesting. When you backspace or delete words, Google Docs automatically crosses them out in green/purple with timestamps for team review.
• Checklist Crossout: In Google Docs interactive checklists, checking a box can automatically strike through the adjacent item.

To cross out text on Reddit:

• Fancy Pants Editor (Desktop): Highlight your text and click the Strikethrough icon (an S with a line through it) in the formatting toolbar.
• Markdown Mode & Mobile App: Wrap your words in double tildes: ~~crossout text reddit~~.
• Reddit Post Titles: Reddit strictly disables Markdown in submission titles. To post a crossed-out title, paste Unicode strikethrough characters from our generator into the title field.

YouTube comments, titles, and descriptions do not support native strikethrough markdown (using ~text~ or ~~text~~ will only display literal tildes).

The only way to cross out text on YouTube is by using our Unicode Strikethrough Generator:

1. Enter your comment in the text generator above.
2. Click the Copy button.
3. Paste the crossed-out text (Y̶o̶u̶T̶u̶b̶e̶) directly into the YouTube comment box or video description and post.

To cross out text in Microsoft Excel:

• Cell Shortcut: Select any cell and press Ctrl + 5 on Windows or ⌘ + Shift + X on Mac.
• Automated To-Do List (Conditional Formatting): Select your data, click Conditional Formatting > New Rule, choose Use a formula to determine which cells to format, enter =B2="Done", click Format, check Strikethrough, and click OK. Now checking off an item automatically strikes it out!
• Sheet Names & Charts: Excel disables formatting in tab names; use our Unicode copy-paste generator to cross out sheet tabs or chart legends.

To do crossout text online in 3 simple steps:

1. Type or paste your text into the workspace generator above.
2. Customize your style: Choose whether you want spaces between words crossed out with the Cross-out spaces toggle, and select from Strikethrough, Slash, Underline, or Wavy accents.
3. Click Copy. Your crossed-out text is on your clipboard ready to paste into any email, messaging app, or profile bio.

To cross out text in Gmail on desktop:

1. Open the Gmail compose window and highlight the text you want to strike through.
2. Press the keyboard shortcut: Alt + Shift + 5 on Windows or ⌘ + Shift + X on Mac.
3. Or click the Formatting options icon (the underlined A next to Send), click the More formatting dropdown arrow on the right, and click the Strikethrough icon.
4. Gmail Subject Lines: Gmail forbids HTML formatting in email Subject fields. To cross out words in your Subject line, copy Unicode strikethrough from our tool and paste it directly into the Subject line.

You do not need Microsoft Word, Office 365, or any installed software to type crossed-out text:

Simply use our free online strikethrough generator directly in your web browser. Type your text into the top box, and our in-browser JavaScript engine converts each letter into Unicode characters with combining stroke marks in real time. It works on Windows, Mac, Linux, Chromebook, iPhone, iPad, and Android with zero installation or registration.

Screen readers (such as NVDA, JAWS, and Apple VoiceOver) interpret Unicode strikethrough text differently than standard HTML tags:

• Unicode Combining Characters: Screen readers typically announce each character followed by its diacritical mark (e.g., reading "H, Combining Long Stroke Overlay, e, Combining Long Stroke Overlay..."), which can be tedious and difficult to understand.
• Semantic HTML (<del> and <s>): In web development and documents, semantic tags explicitly signal deletion to assistive technology when configured properly.
• Best Practice: When writing critical notices, pricing discounts, or legal terms, supplement crossed-out text with explicit words like "Original Price: $99, Sale Price: $49" so visually impaired users receive the full context.

Yes. Modern search engine crawlers like Googlebot, Bingbot, and DuckDuckBot fully decode UTF-8 text and can recognize the base characters beneath Unicode combining strokes.

However, keep these SEO principles in mind:

• Keyword Relevance: Always keep primary keywords in clean, unformatted text within your page titles, meta descriptions, and <h1> headings to prevent unexpected tokenization.
• HTML <del> Tags: Search engines recognize <del> tags as outdated or superseded information and place greater weight on the updated content surrounding it.
• No Penalty: Using Unicode strikethrough in social snippets, product descriptions, or user comments will not trigger SEO penalties.

Unicode strikethrough operates through the Combining Diacritical Marks block (U+0300 to U+036F):

• The Stroke Glyph: Our tool uses codepoint U+0336 (Combining Long Stroke Overlay), encoded in UTF-8 as two bytes: 0xCC 0xB6.
• Zero-Width Overlay: Unlike regular letters that advance the text cursor forward, combining characters have zero intrinsic display width. They instruct the OS text layout engine (DirectWrite on Windows, CoreText on Apple, HarfBuzz on Linux/Android) to draw the glyph directly centered across the previous letter's bounding box.
• Grapheme Clusters: Each letter plus its combining stroke form a single user-perceived character (extended grapheme cluster), preserving normal text selection and copy-paste behavior across all platforms.

Yes! Depending on where you are typing:

• In Markdown Apps (Discord, Slack, Reddit): Nest your formatting symbols. For bold strikethrough, write **~~bold strike~~**. For bold italic strikethrough, write ***~~all three~~***.
• In Rich Text Editors (Word, Google Docs): Select your text and press both shortcuts: Ctrl + B (Bold) and Alt + Shift + 5 / Ctrl + D, Alt + K (Strikethrough).
• In Plain Text (Instagram, Twitter): Unicode Mathematical Bold or Italic characters can have combining stroke marks attached to produce bold crossed-out text for social media bios.

If crossed-out text looks disconnected or broken on older mobile devices (such as Android 7 or earlier, older budget phones, or legacy browsers), it is due to font rendering engine limitations:

• Missing Mark-to-Base Anchors: Modern OpenType fonts contain precise coordinate tables indicating where combining marks should sit across different letter shapes. Legacy system fonts often lack these tables, causing the strike line to appear too high, too low, or floating alongside letters.
• Font Fallback Boxes: If the device's system font does not support combining diacritics, it falls back to a secondary font, sometimes displaying empty rectangles (tofu characters like ▯).

If your strikethrough text does not render correctly, here are the most frequent causes and quick solutions:

1. Anti-Zalgo Filters: Certain platforms (like some gaming user handles or strict banking portals) automatically strip combining diacritical marks to prevent screen-scrambling spam.
2. Monospaced / Code Blocks: Monospaced fonts assign fixed cell widths and may refuse to overlap combining marks over letters.
3. Spaces Struck Through: If spaces look strange on your screen, uncheck the Cross-out spaces toggle in our generator to only strike through the letters.
4. Try Alternate Styles: If standard strikethrough looks uneven in your app, switch to our Slash (/) or Underline (_) style which often renders with greater stability across legacy fonts.

Yes! Crossed-out text works across all Meta platforms:

• Instagram: Instagram has no native markdown, but our Unicode strikethrough works flawlessly in profile bios, post captions, Reels descriptions, and comments.
• WhatsApp: WhatsApp supports native markdown in chat messages using single tildes: ~your text~. For your WhatsApp About / Status profile where tildes do not work, copy and paste Unicode text from our generator.
• Facebook: Facebook posts, comments, Messenger chats, and group descriptions all support our copied Unicode strikethrough text without any issues.