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Using HTML tags is supposed to work with GitHub Markdown but, in particular, <s>text</s> is not working for me. It used to work on the now deprecated live preview page, but not on preview of README.md file. It works on wikis. I didn't find any special syntax for strikethrough on the Markdown: Syntax page.

Is it not possible?

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migrated from superuser.com May 1 '11 at 16:47

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471

Use ~~tildes around the words~~.

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  • 3
    won't work on multiple paragraphs at once, but this is good enough too.. tnx – Nevena May 3 '11 at 9:25
  • Nice @iangreenleaf – james_womack Apr 8 '13 at 16:41
  • Tildes can be confusing when reading markdown as-is. – Ruud Lenders Sep 2 '14 at 13:48
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    This also works on dillinger.io. Joined this community just to upvote. – MD XF Apr 26 '17 at 16:19
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    It is also working on trello.com. – Juan José Melero Gómez Jul 7 '17 at 12:39
121

I just used the following syntax

<del> ... </del>

successfully on GitHub in an issue description.

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  • 3
    This is a good answer too, since Markdown accepts arbitrary HTML tags. Depends on how you want to use it. – Ian Greenleaf Young Apr 26 '13 at 23:34
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    Works with Unfuddle, thanks! – Stachu Jan 2 '14 at 21:39
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    Nice! Was looking for this to use on an SE site and indeed this is working on SE too – 7ochem Mar 4 '15 at 9:16
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    Does not work with Gitlab :( – Matt Kneiser Sep 15 '15 at 22:45
  • Works with Gitlab! – MiXT4PE Dec 30 '18 at 17:23
31

I know this is an old question, but I don't see a very detailed answer of the possibilities to strikethrough your text. So here's my answer:

There are several ways to do it:

  1. <strike>stike</strike> → strike
  2. <del>strile</del> → strike
  3. <s>strike</s> → strike
  4. ~~strike~~ → ~~strike~~
  5. ~strike~ → ~strike~

Because tildes don't work on Stack Exchange (later: SE) platforms, the HTML syntax is the most correct way to strike your text. This syntax is a little "hack" to do the same thing instead of the markdown notations.

Because there is no universal notation for markdown text, the notations may be different for each platform. Here is an overview for several platforms:

The GitHub Flavored Markdown only mentions that you can use double tilde, but you can use everything.

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  • 1
    Great answer, it's more comprehensive than the accepted, as it provides alternatives to places where ~~ doesn't work ~~ In Multimarkdown and Marked2, the tilde doesn't work for me. – Paul Solt Aug 8 '18 at 15:35
  • To bad <s>the html</s> doesn't work in comments. – Chloe Jan 31 at 4:23
6

Just use ~ to enclose whatever you want to strike.

Here's a GIF.

animated gif showing use of tilde

Just use ~ character at the start and the end in markdown.

~strike~

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  • Does not seem to work anymore – Naramsim Apr 5 at 12:54

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