@Christopher_Marcotte note that abs is a function, so by itself (e^abs) it will produce an ugly monospace identifier of itself: 
it’s very unlikely that a user wants this, so it makes sense to “unambiguously” interpret a function identifier followed by parentheses as a function call (which produces 
).
the way to typeset 
is with e^"abs" (x) (and without the space after this update)