To reproduce: emacs -Q ! ;; input an exclamation mark (#x21) C-x 8 RET 2 0 E 4 RET ;; COMBINING ENCLOSING UPWARD POINTING TRIANGLE RET ;; Newline C-x 8 2 6 A 0 RET ;; WARNING SIGN I tried many fonts, but all results look weird (the first line is incomplete and too large). (I haven't tried it on other platforms yet, so I'm not sure whether it's NS-port specific.) In GNU Emacs 24.3.50.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin12.4.0, NS apple-appkit-1187.39) of 2013-08-31 on xfq.local Bzr revision: 114077 rgm@gnu.org-20130830174039-3aiddsbwhbn5tf9x Windowing system distributor `Apple', version 10.3.1187 Configured using: `configure --with-ns --enable-checking --disable-silent-rules' Important settings: value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8 locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix default enable-multibyte-characters: t Major mode: Lisp Interaction Minor modes in effect: tooltip-mode: t mouse-wheel-mode: t tool-bar-mode: t menu-bar-mode: t file-name-shadow-mode: t global-font-lock-mode: t font-lock-mode: t blink-cursor-mode: t auto-composition-mode: t auto-encryption-mode: t auto-compression-mode: t line-number-mode: t transient-mark-mode: t Recent input: ! C-x 8 2 0 e 4 C-x 8 2 6 a 0 x r e - e m - m b Recent messages: For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a. read-number: Command attempted to use minibuffer while in minibuffer Load-path shadows: None found. Features: (shadow sort gnus-util mail-extr misearch multi-isearch emacsbug message format-spec rfc822 mml easymenu mml-sec mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231 mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader sendmail rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr mail-utils iso-transl time-date tooltip ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel ns-win tool-bar dnd fontset image regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list newcomment lisp-mode prog-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow timer select scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core frame cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev minibuffer nadvice loaddefs button faces cus-face macroexp files text-properties overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable backquote make-network-process ns multi-tty emacs) -- Best regards, Xue Fuqiao. http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/