doorhaalt

Doorhaalt is a Dutch-language term encountered in discussions of editing and proofreading. It refers to the practice of marking text by drawing a visible line through it, leaving the original wording legible but indicating that it is deleted or no longer part of the final text. In this sense, doorhaalt is analogous to the English term “strikethrough.”

Etymology and usage notes suggest that the word is a compound built from door- meaning through and haalt, the present tense of halen (to pull). The combination evokes the action of pulling a line through text. The term is not widely standardized and appears mainly in informal editing discussions or in some proofreading manuals.

In formal publishing, the same concept is typically described as strike-through, deleted text, or redlining, rather than by a specific unique term. With the rise of digital editing, the practical effect of a doorhaalt can be achieved using various technologies: HTML <del> or <s> tags, or platform-specific features; Markdown can emulate the effect with double tilde syntax on supported systems.

See also: Strikethrough, Track changes, Redlining, Proofreading.