`<del>` HTML deleted text element

Baseline

Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

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The <del> HTML element represents a range of text that has been deleted from a document. This can be used when rendering "track changes" or source code diff information, for example. The <ins> element can be used for the opposite purpose: to indicate text that has been added to the document.

This element is often (but need not be) rendered by applying a strike-through style to the text.

Try it

<blockquote>
  There is <del>nothing</del> <ins>no code</ins> either good or bad, but
  <del>thinking</del> <ins>running it</ins> makes it so.
</blockquote>

del {
  text-decoration: line-through;
  background-color: #ffbbbb;
  color: #555555;
}

ins {
  text-decoration: none;
  background-color: #d4fcbc;
}

blockquote {
  padding-left: 15px;
  border-left: 3px solid #d7d7db;
  font-size: 1rem;
}

Attributes

This element's attributes include the global attributes.

cite: A URI for a resource that explains the change (for example, meeting minutes).
datetime: This attribute indicates the time and date of the change and must be a valid date string with an optional time. If the value cannot be parsed as a date with an optional time string, the element does not have an associated timestamp. For the format of the string without a time, see Date strings. The format of the string if it includes both date and time is covered in Local date and time strings.

Examples

html

<p><del>This text has been deleted</del>, here is the rest of the paragraph.</p>
<del><p>This paragraph has been deleted.</p></del>

Result

Technical summary

Content categories	Phrasing content, flow content.
Permitted content	Transparent.
Tag omission	None, both the starting and ending tag are mandatory.
Permitted parents	Any element that accepts phrasing content.
Implicit ARIA role	`deletion`
Permitted ARIA roles	Any
DOM interface	`HTMLModElement`