Emacs quick reference guide (exerpted from a previous work by David Revelt) Key commands: C- stands for holding down the CONTROl key M- stands for holding down Meta key (usually ESCAPE key) ; stands for a newline character (i.e. hit the RETURN key) Keys Effect C-x C-s save the current file C-x C-c y save the file and quit C-g quit out of any key seqence (quit) C-/ undo last command (can be used repeatedly to undo a series of commands) C-f move forward one character (forward/right arrow) C-b move backward one character (back/left arrow) C-n move down one line (next line/down arrow) C-p move up one line (previous line/up arrow) C-a move to beginning of line C-e move to end of line C-v move forward one-half screen M-v move back one-half screen M-< move to top of document M-> move to bottom of document C-d delete current character C-k delete from current character until next newline mark C-h *delete previous character (like BACKSPACE) C-w delete a marked region C-j insert blank line (like return) C-y "yank" a region out of kill-ring, i.e. once you have killed a line or region with C-k or C-w, C-y will paste it back M-q fill text, i.e. remove end of line markers (\) on the right hand margin (like C-j in pine) C-t flip the order of current character with previous one M-t flip order of current word with previous one (transpose) C-SPACEBAR set a mark at one location in the text C-@ same as C-SPACEBAR C-x C-x move from your current location to where you set the mark C-s search the document forward for string you name C-r search the document backward for string you name C-u command will execute "command" 4^n times, where n is the number of times you hit C-u first (e.g. C-u C-u C-f moves forward 16 spaces) M-x replace-string; type in string to replace; and then type replacement; M-x insert-file; type in path for file you want to insert at current point M-x overwrite-mode; toggles between insert and overwrite mode (insert is the default) M-x line-number mode; puts line numbers at the bottom of the screen M-x spell-buffer; spell checker for entire document There are many more commands and functions besided these. Check out the emacs tutorial and the emacs info pages for more help. Buffer manipulation: C-x C-f filename: create a new buffer and fill it with filename C-x b buffername: switch focus to bufferame C-x b newbuffername: creates empty buffer of that name C-x k [buffername]: kill current buffer or buffername C-x C-s [buffername]: save (write to disk) current buffer or buffername M-x kill-some-buffers: be prompted to delete all buffers one at a time M-x rename-buffer C-x C-v filename: dumps current buffer replaces with filename C-x C-b gets a list of buffers