Conventions

Here are some common Emacs conventions:

• C-: Control key
• M-: Meta key; either Alt key or Escape.
• S-: Shift key
• RET : Return key
• TAB : Tab key

For example, when a command is C-x C-f, you press Control and x, and then Control and f.

• C-x is called character extend. It is followed by one character;
• M-x is called command extend. It is followed by a long name.

Basic Commands

• C-x C-f : Open (“Visit”) a file
• C-x C-v RET : Reload a file by finding it again.
• C-x k : Close file (“Kill buffer”)
• C-x C-s : Save buffer changes to a file.
• C-x C-w: Write file.
• C-x C-c : Quit Emacs.

All these key combinations are actually calling Emacs commands. For example, C-x C-f runs the command find-file. The key combination itself is called a key binding.

Navigate

• C-a: Go to the beginning of the line.
• C-e: Go to the end of the line.
• C-n: Next line.
• C-p: Previous line.
• C-l: recenter-top-bottom, move the current line successively to the centre, to the top and then to the bottom of the window.
• M-a: Go to beginning of sentence.
• M-e: Go to end of sentence.
• M-f: Move forward by one word.
• M-b: Move backward by one word.
• M-m: Move to first non-whitespace character of the line (back-to-indentation).
• M-<: Go to beginning of buffer.
• M->: Go to end of buffer.
• M-{: Go to beginning of paragraph.
• M-}: Go to end of paragraph.
• M-g M-g: goto-line, go to the line number.
• C-x C-n: Use the current column as the preferred column when moving

Zooming in/out

• C-x C--: Decrease font size (“zoom out”).
• C-x C-+: Increase font size (“zoom in”).
• C-x C-0: Reset to default size.

Counting

• C-x l: Number of lines in the buffer.
• M-=: Number of lines, words and characters in the region.

In Minibuffer

• C-M-b: Go to previous path separator;
• C-M-f: Go to next path separator.

Next: Editing