diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index c2ff7b290b8cfaa1eb3338a55d44bc285e31a0a0..678eb0e9684d5af48b3d838704137e547f4ebed9 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,6 +1,8 @@
 2014-03-04  Benno Schulenberg  <bensberg@justemail.net>
 	* doc/syntax/nanorc.nanorc - Add keyword 'quiet', sort 'locking',
 	and concatenate the two separate strings into one.
+	* src/nano.c (main), doc/nanorc.sample.in - Make the M-P toggle
+	actually do something by default, by using visible characters.
 
 2014-03-01 Chris Allegretta <chrisa@asty.org>
 	* global.c (shortcut_init) - Don't actually free the shortcut
diff --git a/doc/nanorc.sample.in b/doc/nanorc.sample.in
index f7f3097d6e7ef81a572e4d5074d035093b5bbb33..d8fd60ae78205b537680ffd2415fb8616b8745a0 100644
--- a/doc/nanorc.sample.in
+++ b/doc/nanorc.sample.in
@@ -181,7 +181,7 @@
 ## The two single-column characters used to display the first characters
 ## of tabs and spaces.  187 in ISO 8859-1 (0000BB in Unicode) and 183 in
 ## ISO-8859-1 (0000B7 in Unicode) seem to be good values for these.
-# set whitespace "  "
+# set whitespace ":."
 
 ## Detect word boundaries more accurately by treating punctuation
 ## characters as parts of words.
diff --git a/src/nano.c b/src/nano.c
index 942a213140c5caba7cf4140a9c4fb08c152db6bb..297376dcdb0d23daa68f5011e1fb4b00f108d031 100644
--- a/src/nano.c
+++ b/src/nano.c
@@ -2577,7 +2577,7 @@ int main(int argc, char **argv)
 #if !defined(NANO_TINY) && defined(ENABLE_NANORC)
     /* If whitespace wasn't specified, set its default value. */
     if (whitespace == NULL) {
-	whitespace = mallocstrcpy(NULL, "  ");
+	whitespace = mallocstrcpy(NULL, ":.");
 	whitespace_len[0] = 1;
 	whitespace_len[1] = 1;
     }