I want to use a semicolon in the long_description of a port, minivmac in this case: The default is to emulate a Mac Plus (1986-1990); this is also the best-tested and therefore recommended emulation. If I just include the semicolon by itself, as I would expect to be able to do, portindex blows up. Apparently I have to escape the semicolon in some way. If I precede the semicolon with a backslash, as some ports do (p5- html-strip, xephem, xercesj, monit, abclock, xcircuit, starfighter, ski, galaxis, zile, pccts, nbench-byte), then the word with which the semicolon ends is surrounded with curly braces in the output of port info: The default is to emulate a Mac Plus {(1986-1990);} this is also the best-tested and therefore recommended emulation. If I enclose the entire description string in quotation marks, as some other ports do (xearth, plplot), then the entire description string is surrounded by curly braces in port info: {The default is to emulate a Mac Plus (1986-1990); this is also the best-tested and therefore recommended emulation.} So... what's the solution here to get just a plain semicolon displayed in port info?