"T. V. Raman" <ramantv(a)earthlink.net&gt; writes: Does emacspeak redefine the cursor-movement functions? In XEmacs the zmacs region gets deactivated unless the calling function explicitly chooses to leave it active. This is by design: the only functions that are supposed to leave the mark on are movement functions, C-SPC itself, and such. To specify that the mark should remain on, the interactive specification should start with _. Alternatively, you can set `zmacs-region-stays' to t at the end of the function.