Example from https://tonsky.me/blog/unicode/ in R

facepalm.R

facepalm <- "\U1F926"
fitzpatrick_3 <- "\U1F3FC"
zero_width_joiner <- "\U200D"
male <- "\U2642"

my_facepalm <- paste0(facepalm, fitzpatrick_3, zero_width_joiner, male)
my_facepalm
#> [1] "🤦🏼‍♂"

# 😱
nchar(my_facepalm)
#> [1] 4
nchar(my_facepalm, type = "width")
#> [1] 5
data.frame(my_facepalm, a = 1)
#>   my_facepalm a
#> 1       🤦🏼‍♂ 1

# ✅
utf8::utf8_width(my_facepalm)
#> [1] 2
tibble::tibble(my_facepalm, a = 1)
#> # A tibble: 1 × 2
#>   my_facepalm     a
#>   <chr>       <dbl>
#> 1 🤦🏼‍♂              1
library(stringi)
stri_count_boundaries(my_facepalm, opts_brkiter = stri_opts_brkiter("character"))
#> [1] 1