After emacs -Q, open a unicode text file and type a few letters, then the Combining Grapheme Joiner (C-x 8 RET 34f), then a few more letters. Press and hold the left arrow key to go back across the CGJ and here it leaves behind a second box cursor while the actual cursor continues to move across the text beyond. If you input multiple CGJs you'll get multiple box cursors scattered wherever you put them, assuming you don't change to the right arrow and hold that down, which removes the artifacts as it goes along. (See attached image, with 3 artifacts in a line and the actual cursor off to the left.) I came upon this while typing Biblical Hebrew in xeLaTeX, where the CGJ allows the placement of metheg before the vowel. In a RTL paragraph it's still the left arrow that makes the artifact appear, while the right arrow still removes it as it passes. Switching to another buffer in the same frame then back to the text file also removes the extra cursors. By default, my emacs uses the Tibetan Machine Uni font to display the CGJ, so I blacklisted that face and it now uses the same DejaVu Sans face as the rest of the text, with the same results. The state of blink-cursor-mode doesn't affect it, though when it's on and you time the use of the left arrow key just right you can get past the CGJ without leaving a visible artifact. I tested it on GNU Emacs 26.3, and the result was the same, so it's not a regression, even assuming it's a bug at all, and not a feature to show where this invisible character is present (?) Many thanks, David. In GNU Emacs 27.0.91 (build 2, i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.18.9) of 2020-06-01 built on newfont Repository revision: 44c0e074f7cb84481785cb49515a4bd7235a074b Repository branch: emacs-27 Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.11803000 System Description: Slackware 14.2 Recent messages: For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a. Found ‘set-fontset-font’ in Command Index. (Only match) Mark set [2 times] ("Tibetan Machine Uni" "Noto Color Emoji") Type C-x 1 to delete the help window. Char: ͏ (847, #o1517, #x34f, file ...) point=34 of 74 (45%) column=7 Configured using: 'configure PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/local/share/pkgconfig:/usr/lib/pkgconfig:/usr/share/pkgconfig' Configured features: XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG SOUND GPM DBUS GSETTINGS GLIB NOTIFY INOTIFY ACL GNUTLS LIBXML2 FREETYPE HARFBUZZ XFT ZLIB TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS GTK3 X11 XDBE XIM MODULES THREADS PDUMPER LCMS2 GMP Important settings: value of $LC_COLLATE: C value of $LANG: en_US.ISO8859-1 locale-coding-system: iso-latin-1-unix Major mode: Text Minor modes in effect: tooltip-mode: t global-eldoc-mode: t electric-indent-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 Load-path shadows: None found. Features: (shadow sort mail-extr emacsbug message rmc puny dired dired-loaddefs format-spec rfc822 mml mml-sec password-cache epa derived epg epg-config gnus-util rmail rmail-loaddefs text-property-search time-date subr-x seq byte-opt gv bytecomp byte-compile cconv mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231 mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader sendmail rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr mail-utils wid-edit descr-text help-mode cl-loaddefs cl-lib mule-util info easymenu tooltip eldoc electric uniquify ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel term/x-win x-win term/common-win x-dnd tool-bar dnd fontset image regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list replace newcomment text-mode elisp-mode lisp-mode prog-mode register page tab-bar menu-bar rfn-eshadow isearch timer select scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core term/tty-colors frame minibuffer cl-generic cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese eucjp-ms cp51932 hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese composite charscript charprop case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev obarray cl-preloaded 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 threads dbusbind inotify lcms2 dynamic-setting system-font-setting font-render-setting move-toolbar gtk x-toolkit x multi-tty make-network-process emacs) Memory information: ((conses 8 176167 18366) (symbols 24 19078 2) (strings 16 84935 2635) (string-bytes 1 1983984) (vectors 8 17687) (vector-slots 4 1268552 55708) (floats 8 30 62) (intervals 28 37417 199) (buffers 568 14) (heap 1024 18077 2648))