It should also be noted that ZERO WIDTH JOINER is used for other purposes too: https://books.google.ee/books?id=wn5sXG8bEAcC&lpg=PA287&ots=J1bym1VbXE&dq=unicode%20%22ZERO%20WIDTH%20JOINER&pg=PA287#v=onepage&q=unicode%20%22ZERO%20WIDTH%20JOINER&f=false
But I'm not sure if it should affect the character count in such cases.
