Crossed Out (X) Text Generator

Cross words out with an X, not a line—an ✕ follows every character, so a word reads as cancelled while every letter stays whole. Examples: crossed → c✕r✕o✕s✕s✕e✕d✕, nope → n✕o✕p✕e✕, 404 → 4✕0✕4✕.

How the Crossed Out (X) Text Generator Works

The map appends one character — ✕, U+2715 MULTIPLICATION X — after each letter and digit. It is a standalone glyph sitting beside the letter, not a mark drawn over it, so the base characters keep their shape and the line still reads. The result is a cancelled signal without a horizontal strike, which suits short tags and headings where a hard stop is the point.

Where a Row of Crosses Fits

• Deprecated items, retired features, and price comparisons.
• Playful corrections in captions where the cross is part of the joke.
• Badges and label chips that need a strong “not this” cue.

Crossing Out a Phrase

1. Enter a brief phrase (1–6 words).
2. Generate the crossed-out-x version and copy the result.
3. Keep surrounding text normal so the X beat reads clearly.

Keeping It Legible

• All 52 letters and all ten digits get the ✕; spaces and punctuation are left as typed, which is what keeps word breaks visible.
• The ✕ sits at roughly x-height, so it reads evenly against lowercase and a little low against ALL-CAPS — worth previewing a dense capitals lockup.
• Best in short bursts; long X-laden paragraphs can fatigue readers.

Which Toolbar Options Work With Crossed Out Text

An ✕ already follows every character, so the line carries a strong repeating beat before anything is added. Most controls make that worse; two make it better.

• Separator is the one to use, and the old advice here had it backwards. The picker carries a Cross separator whose value is × — the same idea at the word gap, where the per-character ✕ stops: d✕o✕ × n✕o✕t✕. Slash and Pipe work too if you want the break without a third X.

꒰꒱ Wrap frames from outside and leaves the run alone. There is no ✕, ✗ or × among the 57 prefixes and suffixes, so the honest picks are the hard geometric pairs — ▪▫▪, ◈◇◈ or ☠☠☠ if the tone allows it.

✦ Symbol and ❋ Pattern reach the input before the transformation runs, so a letter or digit you insert gets its own ✕ and anything else passes through bare. Note the picker holds emoji and carries no ✕, ✗ or ❌ — an X you want inside the run has to be typed.

Aa Mix Font removes the effect. It restyles your selection in the input, and a restyled letter is no longer a plain letter, so it falls outside the map and comes back with no ✕ at all.

⏰ Recent reopens the symbols and patterns you last picked, and 🖼 Export Image saves the line as PNG, JPG or WebP.

Cross Out Text With an X, or With a Line Through It

"Crossed out" means two different things, and this page only does one of them.

A strikethrough draws a line across the text. The letters sit underneath it and the line runs continuously through the whole phrase. In plain text that is done with a combining mark, and it is what Strike produces: n̶o̶p̶e̶. The variants change the line — Double Strike gives n̶̶o̶̶p̶̶e̶̶, Tilde Strike gives n̴o̴p̴e̴, and Slashed tilts it to n̸o̸p̸e̸.

This page marks each character instead. n✕o✕p✕e✕ is the word with an ✕ standing after every letter — nothing is drawn over anything. It reads louder and more deliberate than a strikethrough, which is why it suits a label rather than an edit: a strikethrough says this was here and is now removed, a row of crosses says no.

If you came here wanting to cross words out the way a word processor does, Strike is the one you want. If you wanted the X to be visible as a mark in its own right, you are in the right place.

Three Ways to Cross Out Text, and When Each One Works

Crossing out is one of the few pieces of formatting that plain text can carry, and there are three separate mechanisms. Which one you need depends entirely on where the words are going.

1. Unicode combining characters — works anywhere text goes. A combining character is one that attaches to the character before it instead of taking its own space. Strike appends U+0336 to every letter, and the marks tile into a continuous horizontal line: s̶o̶l̶d̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶. Because the result is just characters, it survives into a username, a bio, a caption or a spreadsheet cell — anywhere that accepts Unicode text and offers no formatting of its own. The variants change the line rather than the method: Double Strike gives s̶̶o̶̶l̶̶d̶̶ o̶̶u̶̶t̶̶, Tilde Strike a wavier s̴o̴l̴d̴ ̴o̴u̴t̴, Slashed a diagonal s̸o̸l̸d̸ o̸u̸t̸, and Underline moves the same idea below the baseline.

2. HTML — works where a browser renders your markup. <s> and <del> produce a real strikethrough drawn by the renderer, which means it scales properly and a screen reader can announce it as deleted content. It also means nothing survives a copy-paste into a plain-text field: paste it into a bio and you get the words with the tags stripped and no line at all.

3. Markdown — works in the apps that support it. Chat platforms let you wrap text in tildes and format it on send. The number varies by app, so it is worth testing: some take two, some take one. It is the cleanest option where it works, and completely inert where it does not — an unformatted message full of tildes.

And this page is the fourth thing. It does not draw a line at all; it puts a visible ✕ after every character, so s✕o✕l✕d✕ o✕u✕t✕ reads as marked rather than edited. That is the choice: a strikethrough says this was here and has been removed, and a row of crosses says no. Unlike HTML it pastes anywhere, and unlike a combining mark there is nothing for a font to misplace.

Which X This Is, and the Ones It Is Not

Several characters look like a cross and none of them is interchangeable. The one this page uses is ✕ U+2715 MULTIPLICATION X, from the Dingbats block — a drawn, symmetrical X with even stroke weight, meant as a graphic mark rather than as punctuation or arithmetic.

The three it gets confused with:

• × U+00D7 MULTIPLICATION SIGN — the arithmetic operator. Narrower, set at the height of a maths expression, and semantically a number thing. It is the separator the toolbar offers, which is why a Cross separator and the ✕ run read as two different marks rather than a repetition.
• ✗ U+2717 BALLOT X — the hand-drawn tick-box reject, with uneven strokes. Right for a checklist beside a ✓; wrong when you want a clean geometric X.
• ❌ U+274C CROSS MARK — an emoji, so most platforms draw it in colour at emoji size. It dominates any line it lands in.

All of them are on the check mark symbols page if you want to place one yourself rather than have it repeat after every character.

What It Costs to Paste

Every character comes back as two — itself, then the cross — so length doubles. c✕a✕n✕c✕e✕l✕l✕e✕d✕ is nine letters to a reader and eighteen characters to a counter, and a 32-character username holds sixteen letters.

The ✕ is three UTF-8 bytes against one for a plain letter, so n✕o✕p✕e✕ travels as 16 bytes where nope takes 4. It is an ordinary printable character from the Dingbats block rather than a combining mark, which makes it the sturdier choice of the two approaches: nothing has to attach to anything, so there is no font on which the effect can slide out of position or be normalised away on save.

The usual trade still applies — n✕o✕p✕e✕ is not the string nope, so search and mention lookups will not match it.

Similar tools to explore: Strike for n̶o̶p̶e̶, Double Strike for the heavier n̶̶o̶̶p̶̶e̶̶, Tilde Strike for a wavier n̴o̴p̴e̴, and Slashed for the diagonal n̸o̸p̸e̸.