SUMMARY
Confluence: Adding a check mark before a hyper link would fail silently.
STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Edit a page.
2. Insert a link to another page on a new line, then save.
3. Edit the page again and move the cursor to just before the link, then insert emoticon. See attached screenshot 1. Save.
RESULTS
After save, the checkmark does not show up. See attached screenshot 2.
WORKAROUND
1. Insert a space after the emoticon (before the hyperlink) and then click save. Then the emoticon stays.
2. Edit the page again and delete the space you added in step 1. Then save. Then the emoticon stays again whereas before it vanished.

Additional testing has show that emoticons can not be part of the title of a link. When inserting one directly next to a link in edit mode, the emoticon gets rendered (ie

(/)

for check mark).
Upon saving the page, the emoticon will disappear.
When clicking on the link in edit mode, navigate to the edit option of the link and adding the ( / ) to the title there, the short cut for the emoticon will not get rendered after page save, and the title of the link will simply display the 3 characters ( / )

In effect this appears to relate to CONF-26042

Besides that, another additional testing on Confluence 5.4.4 shows that this issue cannot be replicated if the link inserted to the page is a web link.