diff --git a/src/bin/pg_amcheck/t/004_verify_heapam.pl b/src/bin/pg_amcheck/t/004_verify_heapam.pl
index 8c796ed221..f6d2c5f787 100644
--- a/src/bin/pg_amcheck/t/004_verify_heapam.pl
+++ b/src/bin/pg_amcheck/t/004_verify_heapam.pl
@@ -367,10 +367,11 @@ for (my $tupidx = 0; $tupidx < $ROWCOUNT; $tupidx++)
 	{
 		close($file);    # ignore errors on close; we're exiting anyway
 		$node->clean_node;
-		plan skip_all =>
-		  sprintf(
+		plan skip_all => sprintf(
 			"Page layout of index %d differs from our expectations: expected (%x, %x, \"%s\"), got (%x, %x, \"%s\")",
-			$tupidx, 0xDEADF9F9, 0xDEADF9F9, "abcdefg", $a_1, $a_2, $b);
+			$tupidx, 0xDEADF9F9, 0xDEADF9F9, "abcdefg", $a_1, $a_2,
+			# escape non-word characters to avoid confusing the terminal
+			$b =~ s{(\W)}{ sprintf '\x%02x', ord($1) }aegr);
 		exit;
 	}