Zero Width Joiner

ZWJ

Technical/Unicode

An invisible Unicode character (U+200D) used to join multiple emoji into a single composite emoji, such as combining people and objects into profession emoji.

The Zero Width Joiner is a non-printing character that, when placed between two emoji, signals that they should be rendered as a single glyph if the platform supports that combination. If not supported, the individual emoji are shown side by side — a graceful fallback.

ZWJ sequences enable hundreds of emoji without requiring new code points for each. For example: 👩 + ZWJ + 💻 = 👩‍💻 (woman technologist). The family emoji, profession emoji, and many diversity emoji all use ZWJ.

Platforms decide which ZWJ sequences to support. Apple, Google, and others may recognize different combinations, which is why some emoji appear differently or as multiple characters across devices.

Related Terms

Emoji Sequence Emoji Sequence
An ordered set of one or more Unicode code points that together represent a single emoji character. Grapheme Cluster Grapheme Cluster
A user-perceived character that may be composed of multiple Unicode code points displayed as a single visual unit.

Related Tools

🔍 Sequence Analyzer Sequence Analyzer
Decode ZWJ sequences, skin tone modifiers, keycap sequences, and flag pairs into individual components. 🔀 Platform Compare Platform Compare
Compare how emojis render across Apple, Google, Samsung, Microsoft, and more. See visual differences side by side.

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