The escapes that ‘-printf’ and ‘-fprintf’ recognise are:
\aAlarm bell.
\bBackspace.
\cStop printing from this format immediately and flush the output.
\fForm feed.
\nNewline.
\rCarriage return.
\tHorizontal tab.
\vVertical tab.
\\A literal backslash (‘\’).
\0ASCII NUL.
\NNNThe character whose ASCII code is NNN (octal).
A ‘\’ character followed by any other character is treated as an ordinary character, so they both are printed, and a warning message is printed to the standard error output (because it was probably a typo).