The exact behaviour of the ZWJ varies depending on whether the use of a conjunct consonant or ligature (where multiple characters are shown with a single glyph) is expected by default; for instance, it suppresses the use of conjuncts in Devanagari (whilst still allowing the use of the individual joining form of a dead consonant, as opposed to a halant form as would be required by the zero-width non-joiner), but induces the use of conjuncts in Sinhala (which does not use them by default).[2][3] Similarly to Sinhala, when a ZWJ is placed between two emoji characters (or interspersed between multiple), it can result in a single glyph being shown, such as the family emoji, made up of two adult emoji and one or two child emoji.[4]
In some cases, such as the second Devanagari example below, the ZWJ can be used to display a joining form in isolation, when included after the character and combining halant code.
The character's code point is U+200DZERO WIDTH JOINER (‍). In the InScript keyboard layout for Indian languages, it is typed by the key combination Ctrl+Shift+1. However, many layouts use the position of QWERTY's ']' key for this character.[5]
^"13.2. Sinhala (§ Virama (al-lakuna) and Consonant Forms)". The Unicode Standard, Core Specification. Unicode Consortium. Unless combined with a U+200D ZERO WIDTH JOINER, an al-lakuna is always visible and does not join consonants to form orthographic consonant clusters. […] Note how the use of ZWJ in Sinhala differs from that of typical Indic scripts.