Colin Rafferty <craffert(a)ms.com&gt; writes: Because it removes *all* the properties, not only those that your application has set up. This can be catastrophic for hooks that depend on properties being preserved. It is a much better coding practice to remove the properties you consider harmful (e.g. `read-only' or `keymap') using `remove-text-properties'. It may not be all that blasphemous for strings that you copy out of a buffer. Still, it's best avoided, unless you're sure you need it.