| Essential Commands |
| C-h | help |
| C-x u | undo |
| C-x C-g | get out of current operation or command |
| C-x C-s | save the file |
| C-x C-c | close Emacs |
| | |
| Cursor movement |
| C-f | forward one character |
| C-b | back one character |
| C-p | previous line |
| C-n | next line |
| C-a | beginning of line |
| C-e | end of line |
| C-l | center current line on screen |
| C-v | scroll forward |
| M-v | scroll backward |
| M-f | forward one word |
| M-b | back one word |
| M-a | beginning of sentence |
| M-e | end of sentence |
| M-{ | beginning of paragraph |
| M-} | end of paragraph |
| M-< | beginning of buffer |
| M-> | end of buffer |
| | |
| Other Important Functions |
| M-(n) | repeat the next command (n) times |
| C-d | delete a character |
| M-d | delete a word |
| C-k | kill line |
| M-k | kill sentence |
| C-s | search forward |
| C-r | search in reverse |
| M-% | query replace |
| M-c | capitalize word |
| M-u | uppercase word |
| M-l | lowercase word |
| C-t | transpose characters |
| M-t | transpose words |
| C-@ | mark beginning of region |
| C-w | cut--wipe out everything from mark to point |
| C-y | paste--yank deleted text into current location |
| M-q | reformat paragraph |
| M-g | reformat each paragraph in region |
| M-x auto-fill-mode | turn on word wrap |
| M-x set-variable <return> fill-column <return> 45 |
| | | set length of lines to 45 characters |
| M-x goto-line <return> 16 | move cursor to line 16 |
| M-w | copy region marked |
| C-x C-f | find file and read it |
| C-x C-v | find and read alternate file |
| C-x i | insert file at cursor position |
| C-x C-s | save file |
| C-x C-w | write buffer to a different file |
| C-x C-c | exit emacs, and be prompted to save |