The ‘strikethrough’ as a visual cue – and maybe hypnosis thrown in

I received a marketing email the other day which used ’strikethroughs’ in the text.

For a second I thought someone had just pressed ’send’ on an early proof, but I quickly figured out that the strikethroughs were being used as visual devices designed to layer some additional meaning into the text.

I’ve given up hunting about in my email inbox for the specific example but the text went something like this:

A bit tricksy? Maybe. But what was rocking my boat was how the strikethroughs were being used as visual metaphors to convey both a thought process and some softer values.

I passionately believe that the way we engage with content is being profoundly changed by the visuality of screen-based media. I’m not convinced that you could use strikthroughs in printed material and achieve the same effect. (Shoot me down in flames now, if you don’t agree.)

I also came across the strikethrough technique on a website trawl recently.

All of which leaves me with a couple of questions. Can visual clues work on a hypnotic level? I’m thinking about the use of negatives in written and spoken language eg: ‘Do not think about pink elephants!’. I know for a fact that everybody who read the previous sentence ended up thinking about pink elephants, albeit briefly. This is because you have to think about whatever the ‘not’ is being applied to before you can not do it.

If you’re still with me, I need to know how people decode the information that is ‘under’ the strikethroughs and how they weight it compared to the replacement words that are not struck through (tortuous bit of past tense, but there you go).

If telling someone ‘not’ to do something actually adds emphasis, then a word under a strikethrough should be more powerful than the word it is replaced by. But I’m not convinced that’s the way this technique is currently being used. So, if you’ve got a minute, tell me what is the lasting image you retain after reading the following:

Shut your eyes for a few seconds and conjure up an image based on what you remember from the sentence above. Is the image closest to:

Option A

The flowers in the meadow were azure and shook as the storm howled.

Option B

The flowers in the garden were blue and swayed as the wind blew.

Comment through this post or send an email to the lab rats at cdacontentlab@webwordsworking.co.uk

PS

Extra points are awarded if you enclose a pretty drawing based on which image you found the stronger.