Strikethrough text for Facebook

Strikethrough says “this was true and now isn't” while leaving the old words visible. That's more open than quietly deleting them, and it's why the same few uses turn up on Facebook again and again.

In each of these, the crossed-out text sits right next to its replacement or a word like “sold”. A line through something on its own leaves people guessing what happened.

Unicode has no crossed-out letters. It has combining marks instead: characters with no width that attach to whatever comes just before them. The strikethrough style here puts U+0336, combining long stroke overlay, after every letter, digit and punctuation mark, but not after spaces. So “for sale” becomes f̶o̶r̶ s̶a̶l̶e̶, two separate lines with a gap where the space was.

The slashed style uses U+0338, combining long solidus overlay. Unicode even defines ≠ as an equals sign followed by this mark. Each character gets its own diagonal, as in S̸u̸n̸d̸a̸y̸, which reads more like “cancelled” or “not” than “deleted”. Unicode also has short versions of both marks, U+0335 and U+0337, that cross only part of a character.

Underline, also in the list above, works the same way with a different mark, U+0332, drawn under each character. It points at a word rather than cancelling it. For the new price next to a crossed-out old one, bold usually does better than underline, since underlined text on a screen tends to look like a link.

Because the stroke is drawn one character at a time, its look depends on the reader's font. On one phone the strokes meet in a clean line; on another you'll see small breaks between letters.

Tip: Want an old price that's bold and crossed out? Copy the bold version from the generator, paste it back into the box, then copy the strikethrough version: ₹̶𝟮̶,̶𝟱̶𝟬̶𝟬̶. The stroke attaches to any character, bold maths digits included.

Here's the catch with strikethrough. All of its meaning sits in the line, and the line is the part a screen reader is most likely to drop. Read aloud, “Study table, ₹̶2̶,̶5̶0̶0̶ ₹1,800” can come out as a table with two prices and no hint of which one is current. Other screen readers go the opposite way and name the stroke after every character, which buries the price in noise.

• Put the change into words as well: “₹2,500, now ₹1,800” makes sense with or without the line.
• Add (sold), (taken) or (cancelled) after anything you cross out in a list.
• For a new time or place, write “new time” or “moved to” in plain text beside the struck-through version.
• Keep the line for emphasis and jokes, never as the only sign that something changed.

The same advice helps people skimming on a small screen, where a thin stroke through two or three digits is easy to miss.

Facebook lets you edit a post after it's published, so one post can keep up with a sale instead of collecting “is this still available?” comments. Cross items out as they go:

1. Keep your original list in your phone's notes app, one item per line, with prices in plain digits.
2. When something sells, copy just that line into the box at the top of this page and copy its strikethrough version.
3. Open the post's menu, choose Edit post, swap the line for the crossed-out one and add (sold) after it.
4. Save. Earlier comments stay attached to the post, and anyone arriving later can see at a glance what's left.

Tip: Selling a single item on Marketplace? The listing's Mark as sold option does the job better. Strikethrough earns its place in posts that list several things, only some of which have gone.