Put a line through your text with real characters, so the effect survives anywhere — including fields that have no strikethrough button.
| Input | Output |
|---|---|
| sold out (Strikethrough) | s̶o̶l̶d̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ |
| $99 (Strikethrough) | $̶9̶9̶ |
| typo (Strikethrough) | t̶y̶p̶o̶ |
Strikethrough is the standard way to say 'this changed' — old prices, corrected typos, retracted statements, jokes about what you really meant. It also works in places with no rich-text support, such as a plain-text email, a form field or a filename.
Apps with their own markup are usually easier: WhatsApp wraps text in tildes (~like this~) and Markdown uses double tildes. That native formatting disappears the moment the text leaves the app, whereas the Unicode version here survives everywhere — including plain-text fields with no formatting at all.
Because the stroke is drawn by the font over each character separately. Spaces, emoji and characters pulled from a fallback font can break the line or place it at a different height. On short strings and standard fonts the line is seamless; on mixed content it may not be.
It makes text harder to read for screen-reader users, and the strikethrough meaning itself is visual only — a screen reader just reads the words. If the crossing-out carries meaning, state it in words too.
Yes, technically — you can stack several combining marks. In practice the lines collide and the text becomes a mess, so combine them only for a deliberate glitch effect.