Here's a minimal example: #+begin_src org
#+startup: beamer #+latex_class: beamer #+options: tex:t * A headline a word^{*} followed by another^{*} - bullet item^{*} - bullet item^{*} - bullet item - bullet item #+end_src I just wanted an asterisk to put a little footnote for two items in a longer list and noticed that it shifted the whole slide up. Same for regular LaTeX document export. Seems like it only happens if the two bullets are consecutive. In other words, this works fine: #+begin_src org a word^{*} followed by another and let's see how far apart they need to be before this isn't triggered anymore by org interpreting LaTeX math as bold markup and inserting textbf commands in the export^{*}. Ah, yes. That does it. - bullet item^{*} - bullet item - bullet item^{*} #+end_src I also tried explicitly forcing math mode, but with varied success: #+begin_src org appears to work: a word\(^{*}\) followed by another\(^{*}\) still doesn't work (asterisks are there, but org doesn't put it in as an =\item=, taking the "-" bullet markup literally - bullet item\(^{*}\) - bullet item\(^{*}\) - bullet item - bullet item #+end_src This is on the old exporter (not sure if org has actually moved to this or not yet... but either way, I've still just been doing things "the old way" as I haven't really dug into the new one yet). Best regards, John