diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 8fbd044..18be3b9 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -269,7 +269,9 @@ The screen on which every other node renders.
   display text above the basic multilingual plane. this is behind an option
   because it may affect performance slightly negatively. without this option
   enabled, all double-width and surrogate pair characters will be replaced by
-  `??` and `?` respectively.
+  `??` and `?` respectively. (NOTE: libvte (e.g. gnome-terminal) cannot display
+  characters that are both surrogate pairs _and_ double-width properly. there
+  is no way for blessed to fix this unfortunately).
 
 These border-overlapped elements:
 
diff --git a/test/widget-eaw.js b/test/widget-eaw.js
index 39c5a52..c860278 100644
--- a/test/widget-eaw.js
+++ b/test/widget-eaw.js
@@ -79,7 +79,11 @@ var lorem = 'Non eram nescius Brute cum quae summis ingeniis exquisitaque'
 + ' legantur';
 
 lorem = lorem.replace(/e/gi, DOUBLE);
-lorem = lorem.replace(/a/gi, SURROGATE_DOUBLE);
+// NOTE: libvte breaks when trying to display
+// this surrogate pair double width character:
+if (process.argv[2] !== 'vte') {
+  lorem = lorem.replace(/a/gi, SURROGATE_DOUBLE);
+}
 lorem = lorem.replace(/o/gi, SURROGATE_SINGLE);
 
 var main = blessed.box({