7 Basic Editing Commands

Here we explain the basics of how to enter text, make corrections, and save the text in a file. If this material is new to you, we suggest you first run the Emacs learn-by-doing tutorial, by typing C-h t (help-with-tutorial).

• Inserting Text		Inserting text by simply typing it.
• Moving Point		Moving the cursor to the place where you want to change something.
• Erasing		Deleting and killing text.
• Basic Undo		Undoing recent changes in the text.
• Files		Visiting, creating, and saving files.
• Help		Asking what a character does.
• Blank Lines		Making and deleting blank lines.
• Continuation Lines		How Emacs displays lines too wide for the screen.
• Position Info		What line, row, or column is point on?
• Arguments		Numeric arguments for repeating a command N times.
• Repeating		Repeating the previous command quickly.