In emacs -Q's scratch buffer, try the following: M-: (indent-relative) RET Repeating this will move to the next appropriate indentation point as indicated in indent-relative's docstring. Now try: M-: (indent-relative-maybe) RET The point does not move even when there are appropriate indentation points to move to. This contradicts the intention of the docstring for indent-relative-maybe: If the previous nonblank line has no indent points beyond the column point starts at, this command does nothing. I would have expected, in indent-relative, that the calculation of a suitable indentation position is done independent of the argument UNINDENTED-OK. The following diff fixes this: