diff --git a/core/org.eclipse.cdt.core/parser/org/eclipse/cdt/internal/core/pdom/indexer/TodoTaskParser.java b/core/org.eclipse.cdt.core/parser/org/eclipse/cdt/internal/core/pdom/indexer/TodoTaskParser.java
index 923d8d1369b..d1584cc8d35 100644
--- a/core/org.eclipse.cdt.core/parser/org/eclipse/cdt/internal/core/pdom/indexer/TodoTaskParser.java
+++ b/core/org.eclipse.cdt.core/parser/org/eclipse/cdt/internal/core/pdom/indexer/TodoTaskParser.java
@@ -145,10 +145,12 @@ public class TodoTaskParser {
     			}
     		}
     		// Trim the message
-    		while (msgStart < end && CharOperation.isWhitespace(comment[end - 1]))
+    		while (msgStart < end && CharOperation.isWhitespace(comment[end - 1])) {
     			end--;
-    		while (msgStart < end && CharOperation.isWhitespace(comment[msgStart]))
+    		}
+    		while (msgStart < end && (CharOperation.isWhitespace(comment[msgStart]) || comment[msgStart] == ':')) {
     			msgStart++;
+    		}
     		if (msgStart == end) {
     			// If the description is empty, we might want to see if two tags
     			// are not sharing the same message.
diff --git a/core/org.eclipse.cdt.ui/src/org/eclipse/cdt/internal/ui/text/TaskTagRule.java b/core/org.eclipse.cdt.ui/src/org/eclipse/cdt/internal/ui/text/TaskTagRule.java
index 7ee4fc3d0f6..a0059f18b4c 100644
--- a/core/org.eclipse.cdt.ui/src/org/eclipse/cdt/internal/ui/text/TaskTagRule.java
+++ b/core/org.eclipse.cdt.ui/src/org/eclipse/cdt/internal/ui/text/TaskTagRule.java
@@ -43,8 +43,7 @@ public final class TaskTagRule extends CombinedWordRule implements IPropertyChan
 		}
 
 		public boolean isWordPart(char c) {
-			// Allow task tags like "todo(myname):" 
-			return c == '.' || c == '(' || c == ')' || c == ':' || Character.isJavaIdentifierPart(c);
+			return c == '.' || Character.isJavaIdentifierPart(c);
 		}
 	}