AFAICT, this is because the function that was introduced to de-duplicate the horizontal line code does (let ((p (point))) (insert "\n") …) whereas the code to draw the last line did: (let ((p (1+ (point)))) (insert "\n\n") …) If I'm not mistaken, this can be fixed simply by adding (insert "\n") before the final call to custom-group--draw-horizontal-line, as done in this patch: