Hitting 'C-u C-x =' on the first 7 and the backslashes says: There are text properties here: face (font-lock-variable-name-face font-lock-string-face) fontified t On the next two forms, I get: There are text properties here: face font-lock-string-face fontified t Is this difference on purpose? Best, Arash In GNU Emacs 30.0.50 (build 1, aarch64-apple-darwin23.2.0, NS appkit-2487.30 Version 14.2.1 (Build 23C71)) of 2024-01-07 built on MacMutant.fritz.box Repository revision: f866c85ac4e32df8061b285b6b44b15346994f3d Repository branch: master Windowing system distributor 'Apple', version 10.3.2487 System Description: macOS 14.2.1 Configured using: 'configure --with-ns --without-pop --without-mailutils --with-threads --with-modules --with-native-compilation --without-compress-install 'CFLAGS=-O2 -g0 -pipe' 'CPPFLAGS=-I/opt/homebrew/Cellar/gcc/13.2.0/include -I/opt/homebrew/Cellar/libgccjit/13.2.0/include -I/opt/homebrew/Cellar/gmp/6.3.0/include' 'LDFLAGS=-L/opt/homebrew/Cellar/gcc/13.2.0/lib/gcc/current -L/opt/homebrew/Cellar/gmp/6.3.0/lib'' Configured features: ACL GLIB GMP GNUTLS JSON LCMS2 LIBXML2 MODULES NATIVE_COMP NOTIFY KQUEUE NS PDUMPER PNG RSVG SQLITE3 THREADS TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS TREE_SITTER WEBP XIM ZLIB Important settings: value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8 locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix