diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 0da1aafc1..29fe14710 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
2016-11-30 Peter Stephenson
+ * 40049: NEWS: notes on Unicode 9 (40037).
+
* 40043: Src/Zle/computil.c: fix indentation (recent gcc warns
about this).
diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index 433703a1e..403cd612c 100644
--- a/NEWS
+++ b/NEWS
@@ -7,6 +7,13 @@ Note also the list of incompatibilities in the README file.
Changes from 5.2 to 5.3
-----------------------
+It is possible to enable character width support for Unicode 9 by
+configuring with `--enable-unicode9'; this compiles in some additional
+tables. At some point this support may move into a module, in which
+case the configure option will be changed to cause the module to be
+permanently loaded. This option is not useful unless your terminal also
+supports Unicode 9.
+
The new word modifier ':P' computes the physical path of the argument.
It is different from the existing ':a' modifier which always resolves
'/before/here/../after' to '/before/after', and differs from the