On Monday,  4 Sep 2017 at 12:08, Pdj wrote:
> Hello, I am observing this (funky?) behavior:
> in the agenda, the deadline seems to be identified only if it
> immediately follows the headline, and it is ignored otherwise.
> Am I missing something?   Thank you, Paolo.

You are not missing something.  As the manual says:

    A timestamp may be preceded by special keywords to facilitate
    planning.  Both the timestamp and the keyword have to be positioned
    immediately after the task they refer to.

I guess immediately means not even a blank line.

-- 
: Eric S Fraga via Emacs 26.0.50, Org release_9.0.10-723-g23eba9