Thanks Sebastien and Eric,

On Tuesday, 28 Jul 2015 at 09:24, Sebastien Vauban wrote:
> Eric S Fraga <e.fraga <at> ucl.ac.uk> writes:

[...]

>> You can always use macros instead?

Maybe, if I knew how. I haven't used macros before. I read this and tried

#+MACRO: hi ·$1·
Let’s {{{hi(test)}}} this.

but unsurprisingly that gives the same export error, and moreover within Org does not show the 'highlight' formatting I associated with ·, but rather the macro formatting.

Or did you mean to simply use the fact that any macro gets 'highlighted' within Org -- so I should use something like #+MACRO: hi $1 ?

> Or the `font-lock-add-keywords' mechanism?

In what way? What I read here seems more about highlighting particular words, not any words between particular markers...?

I think the OP wanted markers that would export, not just stand out in
the emacs buffer.

Most importantly, I would like to custom-highlight text within Org, to make my writing easier. The highlighting nor the markers have to be in the exported document. But if they are there, that is icing on the cake.

I figure - perhaps wrongly! - that it should be easiest to have custom marking like ·this· be highlighted within Org, yet be exported literally, without highlighting (i.e. '·' is treated just like any old character by the exporter)?

cheers