Combining Short Stroke Overlay

It modifies the letter; it is not punctuation. Its reading depends on the notation or message around the base character. In phonetic notation it can form a barred letter; in ordinary text the same pattern can look struck through.

One mark follows one base character. To cross out a run, each character needs its own following mark; this is not word or paragraph formatting.

A practical workaround from the manual typewriter era was to overstrike an approximate letter with a hyphen or underscore when phonetic type was unavailable.

How do I type the short stroke overlay?

Place it immediately after the base character it should cross. A Unicode character picker or input method can insert it after a base letter. If your notation has a dedicated barred letter, use that character instead.

The long stroke overlay is wider and intended to connect across letters. The short and long solidus overlays are diagonal slash marks.

Why does the short stroke overlay look wrong?

Font support and placement determine the result. The mark can sit too high, detach, disappear, or collide with another mark.

A base plus this overlay may look like a single precomposed stroked letter, but visual similarity does not make them the same text. Search and identifier checks may distinguish the forms.

As of 2026-09-05, some online text tools offer it as a short, per-character strikethrough option. In an ordinary message, crossed letters are more likely to read as deletion, correction, or decoration than as phonetic notation.