Though never used in its contemporary French terminology by Heidegger, it is usually translated as 'under erasure', and involves the crossing out of a word within a text, but allowing it to remain legible and in place.
In the philosophy of deconstruction, sous rature has been described as the typographical expression that seeks to identify sites within texts where key terms and concepts may be paradoxical or self-undermining, rendering their meaning undecidable.
[4] Sous rature as a literary practice originated in the works of German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976).
And subsequently in a letter he penned to Ernst Jünger in 1956 titled "Zur Seinsfrage" (The Question of Being), in which Heidegger seeks to define nihilism.
[7] French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) adopted this technique and further explored the implications of Heidegger's erasure and its application in the wider setting of deconstructive literary theory.