diff --git a/src/EditorFeatures/CSharpTest/Classification/SemanticClassifierTests.cs b/src/EditorFeatures/CSharpTest/Classification/SemanticClassifierTests.cs
index 88da122eaaab69c0c1c5339a4c1a5a5950a8f108..8e2f14b399b1984b07c3f39cbbe3fc6897903b9b 100644
--- a/src/EditorFeatures/CSharpTest/Classification/SemanticClassifierTests.cs
+++ b/src/EditorFeatures/CSharpTest/Classification/SemanticClassifierTests.cs
@@ -2629,5 +2629,12 @@ public async Task TestStringEscape8()
                 Escape(@"{{"),
                 Escape(@"}}"));
         }
+
+        [WorkItem(29451, "https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/issues/29451")]
+        [Fact, Trait(Traits.Feature, Traits.Features.Classification)]
+        public async Task TestDirectiveStringLiteral()
+        {
+            await TestInMethodAsync(@"#line 1 ""a\b""");
+        }
     }
 }
diff --git a/src/EditorFeatures/VisualBasicTest/Classification/SemanticClassifierTests.vb b/src/EditorFeatures/VisualBasicTest/Classification/SemanticClassifierTests.vb
index efc96ac60c338e3afd067da2395f4de0ace49a06..c612a107d8348e227478d1e09da4de08c23ee468 100644
--- a/src/EditorFeatures/VisualBasicTest/Classification/SemanticClassifierTests.vb
+++ b/src/EditorFeatures/VisualBasicTest/Classification/SemanticClassifierTests.vb
@@ -676,5 +676,12 @@ End Operator"
                 Escape("{{"),
                 Escape("}}"))
         End Function
+
+        <WorkItem(29451, "https://github.com/dotnet/roslyn/issues/29451")>
+        <Fact, Trait(Traits.Feature, Traits.Features.Classification)>
+        Public Async Function TestDirectiveStringLiteral() As Task
+            Await TestAsync("#region ""goo""""bar""",
+                Escape(""""""))
+        End Function
     End Class
 End Namespace
diff --git a/src/Workspaces/CSharp/Portable/EmbeddedLanguages/VirtualChars/CSharpVirtualCharService.cs b/src/Workspaces/CSharp/Portable/EmbeddedLanguages/VirtualChars/CSharpVirtualCharService.cs
index 8ed7ca227f02abc875f3caecdcb25eeb833191bd..0d558da8b23225d1b887dbb1b61dbc8d278a72d4 100644
--- a/src/Workspaces/CSharp/Portable/EmbeddedLanguages/VirtualChars/CSharpVirtualCharService.cs
+++ b/src/Workspaces/CSharp/Portable/EmbeddedLanguages/VirtualChars/CSharpVirtualCharService.cs
@@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
 // Copyright (c) Microsoft.  All Rights Reserved.  Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.  See License.txt in the project root for license information.
 
+using System;
 using System.Collections.Immutable;
 using System.Composition;
 using System.Diagnostics;
@@ -22,6 +23,23 @@ protected override bool IsStringLiteralToken(SyntaxToken token)
 
         protected override ImmutableArray<VirtualChar> TryConvertToVirtualCharsWorker(SyntaxToken token)
         {
+            // C# preprocessor directives can contain string literals.  However, these string
+            // literals do not behave like normal literals.  Because they are used for paths (i.e.
+            // in a #line directive), the language does not do any escaping within them.  i.e. if
+            // you have a \ it's just a \   Note that this is not a verbatim string.  You can't put
+            // a double quote in it either, and you cannot have newlines and whatnot.
+            //
+            // We technically could convert this trivially to an array of virtual chars.  After all,
+            // there would just be a 1:1 correspondance with the literal contents and the chars
+            // returned.  However, we don't even both returning anything here.  That's because
+            // there's no useful features we can offer here.  Because there are no escape characters
+            // we won't classify any escape characters.  And there is no way that these strings would
+            // be Regex/Json snippets.  So it's easier to just bail out and return nothing.
+            if (IsInDirective(token.Parent))
+            {
+                return default;
+            }
+
             Debug.Assert(!token.ContainsDiagnostics);
             if (token.Kind() == SyntaxKind.StringLiteralToken)
             {
@@ -42,6 +60,21 @@ protected override ImmutableArray<VirtualChar> TryConvertToVirtualCharsWorker(Sy
             }
         }
 
+        private bool IsInDirective(SyntaxNode node)
+        {
+            while (node != null)
+            {
+                if (node is DirectiveTriviaSyntax)
+                {
+                    return true;
+                }
+
+                node = node.Parent;
+            }
+
+            return false;
+        }
+
         private ImmutableArray<VirtualChar> TryConvertVerbatimStringToVirtualChars(SyntaxToken token, string startDelimiter, string endDelimiter, bool escapeBraces)
             => TryConvertSimpleDoubleQuoteString(token, startDelimiter, endDelimiter, escapeBraces);