Why doesn't my strikethrough text show up correctly when I paste it somewhere?

Support for the underlying Unicode combining characters varies by app, platform, and font — some apps simply don't render the combining strikethrough mark and will silently drop it, showing your text with no line through it at all. There's no universal guarantee; always preview in the specific destination app before relying on the effect for something important.

Is this the same as real strikethrough formatting, like in a word processor?

No — in a word processor, strikethrough is a toggleable style attribute layered on top of your original, unmodified text, fully removable and correctly recognized everywhere including by accessibility tools. This tool instead inserts special Unicode combining characters into the text itself, which is why it works in plain-text-only fields but has much less consistent, guaranteed rendering support across different apps.

Can I combine strikethrough with the small-caps or wide-text generator?

Technically the underlying combining-mark trick can be layered onto already-converted small-caps or fullwidth text, but rendering reliability drops further the more Unicode tricks are stacked together, since you're now depending on a font correctly handling multiple unusual character types at once. If you try it, always preview the result before posting.

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Strikethrough Text Generator

The combining-character Unicode trick behind strikethrough and underline text, and where it doesn't render reliably.

This tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type or paste here is ever sent to a server — see how the calculations work.

Adds a visual strikethrough (or underline) effect to plain text using Unicode combining characters — special marks that attach to the character before them — rather than any text-formatting property. Because it's a genuine character-level trick rather than formatting, it works in plain-text fields with no rich-text options, like most social media bios and captions, but it also comes with real, inconsistent rendering behavior worth understanding before you rely on it.

The stylized text appears here as you type -- copy it straight into any app that supports Unicode.

The combining-character mechanism, and where it breaks

Unicode defines a category of "combining characters" (also called combining diacritical marks) that are designed to attach to the preceding character rather than standing alone — this is the same underlying mechanism used to build accented letters in some encodings (an "e" followed by a combining acute-accent mark renders as "é"). Among these combining marks is one specifically designed to draw a line through the preceding character (combining long stroke overlay, used for strikethrough) and another for a line underneath (combining low line, used for underline).

This generator inserts one of those combining marks after every single letter in your input text, so each individual character gets its own attached strikethrough or underline mark, producing the effect of a continuous line running through the entire word or phrase, one character at a time.

Rendering support for combining characters varies meaningfully by platform, font, and app — most modern browsers and major social platforms (Instagram, X, TikTok) render it correctly as a continuous strikethrough line, but some older apps, certain notification previews, and some non-Latin-script fonts either don't render the combining mark at all (silently dropping it, so the text just displays normally with no strikethrough) or render it in a visually broken, disconnected way. There's no way to guarantee correct rendering everywhere in advance — always preview the result in the specific app you intend to post it in before relying on it for something important.

Who uses this

Adding a strikethrough effect to a bio or caption on a platform (like Instagram) that has no built-in rich-text formatting options at all.
Creating a "crossed-out" visual joke or correction effect in a plain-text social post or comment.
Underlining a short phrase for emphasis where the platform doesn't support real underline formatting.

Edge cases to know about

Long strikethrough or underline runs (many words) can occasionally render with visible gaps or misalignment between characters on some fonts, since each combining mark is technically independent per character rather than a single continuous rendered line — shorter phrases tend to render more cleanly than long ones.
Copy-pasting strikethrough text into a different app than the one you generated it for can produce different rendering results, since font and combining-character support genuinely varies between apps — always check the destination platform specifically.
As with the other Unicode text-styling tools on this site, screen readers generally do not announce the strikethrough or underline effect and may struggle to read the underlying letters correctly when combining marks are attached to every character — avoid this for content where accessibility is a real concern.

Related tools

FAQ

Why doesn't my strikethrough text show up correctly when I paste it somewhere?: Support for the underlying Unicode combining characters varies by app, platform, and font — some apps simply don't render the combining strikethrough mark and will silently drop it, showing your text with no line through it at all. There's no universal guarantee; always preview in the specific destination app before relying on the effect for something important.
Is this the same as real strikethrough formatting, like in a word processor?: No — in a word processor, strikethrough is a toggleable style attribute layered on top of your original, unmodified text, fully removable and correctly recognized everywhere including by accessibility tools. This tool instead inserts special Unicode combining characters into the text itself, which is why it works in plain-text-only fields but has much less consistent, guaranteed rendering support across different apps.
Can I combine strikethrough with the small-caps or wide-text generator?: Technically the underlying combining-mark trick can be layered onto already-converted small-caps or fullwidth text, but rendering reliability drops further the more Unicode tricks are stacked together, since you're now depending on a font correctly handling multiple unusual character types at once. If you try it, always preview the result before posting.