GNU Emacs Manual. Node: Basic

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Chapter 3: Basic Editing Commands

We now give the basics of how to enter text, make corrections, and save the text in a file. If this material is new to you, you might learn it more easily by running the Emacs learn-by-doing tutorial. To use the tutorial, run Emacs and type Control-h t (help-with-tutorial).

To clear the screen and redisplay, type C-l (recenter).

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