why does showbreak setting works only after _vimrc is reloaded?

I run gVim on Windows 7. I have my showbreak set as follows

set showbreak=…

However for some reason when my line is too long I see the following symbol:
¿

I have to reload my _vimrc file in order to display …

Does anybody know what is the issue and what I'm doing wrong?

Any help is appreciated.

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