I am trying to replace a character - say ; - with a new line using replace-string and/or replace-regexp in Emacs. I have tried the following commands: M-x replace-string RET ; RET \n This will replace ; with two characters: \n. M-x replace-regex RET ; RET \n This results in the following error (shown in the minibuffer): Invalid use of `' in replacement text. What's wrong with using replace-string