I need the glyph to be vertically aligned to the text. Now it looks more like it's attached to the bottom.
Here as an example
<a href="#">Zoom</a>
a {
font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif;
font-weight: 600;
font-size: 32px;
color: #333;
text-decoration: none;
text-transform: uppercase;
}
a:before { content:"\2039"; }
and a jsFiddle
This is easiest to do just with vertical-align and a fixed offset. For example
See http://jsfiddle.net/csh0da6o/3/