Hi! I think a recent change to org-split-string in master may have made logging of state changes a little uglier, adding "\\" and an empty line with trailing whitespace. Steps to reproduce: 1. Start fresh Emacs with no local configuration (e.g. mkdir /tmp/emacs && HOME=/tmp/emacs emacs) 2. Install org-plus-contrib package dated 20170731 3. Create an org file with the following two lines: ~~~~~~ #+TODO: TODO(!) DONE(!) * Test ~~~~~~ 4. Move point to the beginning of the "* Test" headline and call org-todo with C-c C-t to change it to a TODO item Expected result: ~~~~~~ * TODO Test - State "TODO" from [2017-08-01 Tue 11:18] ~~~~~~ Actual result: ~~~~~~ * TODO Test - State "TODO" from [2017-08-01 Tue 11:18] \\ ~~~~~~ Note the " \\" and blank line with trailing whitespace in the actual result. I strongly suspect this is a result of a change in behavior of org-split-string in f776e65373. Before that commit, calling (org-split-string "" "\n") as org-store-log-note is doing returned nil. After f776e65373 it returns '(""). IMHO the new behavior of org-split-string actually seems correct to me (splitting a string should arguably never result in nil), so I've fixed this by patching org-store-log-note as demonstrated in the attached patch. Regards, Dale