Use a face, show more context around open parenthesis, #'blink-matching-open lisp/ChangeLog addition: 2013-12-17 Aidan Kehoe <kehoea@parhasard.net> * simple.el (blink-matching-open): When showing the opening parenthesis in the minibiffer, use the isearch face for it, in case there are multiple parentheses in the text shown. When writing moderately involved macros, it's often not enough just to show the backquote context before the parenthesis (e.g. @,.`). Skip over that when searching for useful context in the same way we skip over space and tab. * simple.el (message): * simple.el (lmessage): If there are no ARGS, don't call #'format. This allows extent information to be passed through to the minibuffer. It's probably better still to update #'format to preserve extent info.