Take this example Elisp file: ;;; xxx -- OK: face is outline-1 ;;;; xxx -- OK: face is outline-2 (defun test ()) ; WRONG: face is outline-8 ;; Local Variables: ;; outline-minor-mode-highlight: override ;; eval: (outline-minor-mode 1) ;; End: After loading this file into Emacs you will see that the function definition is displayed incorrectly in face outline-8. I guess this is due to the definition of outline-regexp in lisp-mode.el: ";;;;* [^ \t\n]\\|(\\|\\(^;;;###\\(\\([-[:alnum:]]+?\\)-\\)?\\(autoload\\)\\)" Notice the opening parenthesis in the regular expression that causes the function definition to be recognized as an outline heading. I removed the opening parenthesis and now the face of the function definition is correct. This is fine for me. But note that you loose the ability to move to top-level expressions, like this function definition, with (outline-next-visible-heading) and (outline-previous-visible-heading). Andreas