Much dissection of init.el later, it seems the problem was caused by an interaction with (an outdated version of) another package, rainbow-delimiters. Updating this seems to solve the problem.

Best,

Richard

On Apr 27, 2020, at 3:00 AM, Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> wrote:

Hello,

Richard Stanton <rhstanton@berkeley.edu> writes:

When using org mode (9.3.6), I’ve noticed that putting parentheses
into a section title seems to change the font used to display the
title on the screen. So, for example, on my machine

* Heading

displays in a red font.

If I add something in parentheses, e.g.,

* Heading (with parentheses)

the title now displays in grey. As I’m typing, the font change occurs the moment I type the first character after the open parenthesis.

The behavior is similar for lower level headers too. Is this
deliberate? And if so, is there a way to put parentheses into section
titles without interfering with the display font?

I cannot reproduce it. Is there something in your config?

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Goaziou