Strikethrough in Section Title

Question

I am currently using ulem and \sout to do strikethroughs, but what if I want to strikethrough in a section title?

I'm using hyperref and receive the following error when I use \section{\sout{..}}:

Argument of \UL@word has an extra }.

Does anyone know how to do this?

Answer 1

As always you need to take extra care when using macros in moving arguments like section titles. They are written to the ToC and with hyperref also to the PDF bookmarks which only take text and no formatting.

Make sure to \protect all macros (\sout is already protected). The solution in Why hyperref doesn't like commands set via \let in section titles? didn't worked, but using \texorpdfstring does. I recommend to use an own wrapper macro which uses \texorpdfstring internally and is defined using \DeclareRobustCommand (or \protected\def):

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{ulem}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{nameref}

\DeclareRobustCommand{\hsout}[1]{\texorpdfstring{\sout{#1}}{#1}}

\begin{document}
\tableofcontents

\section{\hsout{Striked out section title}}\label{foo}

\ref{foo}

\autoref{foo}

\nameref{foo}

\end{document}

Answer 2

You can do this by putting \sout inside of \section:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{ulem}

\begin{document}

\section{\sout{Striked out part} of a section title}

\end{document}

Making it work with hyperref

To make this work with hyperref either use \texorpdfstring as in

\section{\texorpdfstring{\sout{Striked out part}}{Striked out part} of a section title}

or use the optional argument of \section as in

\section[Striked out part of a section title]{\sout{Striked out part} of a section title}