4.1 Inserting Text

To insert printing characters into the text you are editing, just type them. This inserts the characters you type into the buffer at the cursor (that is, at point; see Point). The cursor moves forward, and any text after the cursor moves forward too. If the text in the buffer is ‘FOOBAR’, with the cursor before the ‘B’, then if you type XX, you get ‘FOOXXBAR’, with the cursor still before the ‘B’.

To delete text you have just inserted, use BS. BS deletes the character before the cursor (not the one that the cursor is on top of or under; that is the character after the cursor). The cursor and all characters after it move backwards. Therefore, if you type a printing character and then type BS, they cancel out.

To end a line and start typing a new one, type RET. This inserts a newline character in the buffer. If point is in the middle of a line, RET splits the line. Typing DEL when the cursor is at the beginning of a line deletes the preceding newline, thus joining the line with the preceding line.

Emacs can split lines automatically when they become too long, if you turn on a special minor mode called Auto Fill mode. See Filling, for how to use Auto Fill mode.

If you prefer to have text characters replace (overwrite) existing text rather than shove it to the right, you can enable Overwrite mode, a minor mode. See Minor Modes.

Direct insertion works for printing characters and SPC, but other characters act as editing commands and do not insert themselves. If you need to insert a control character or a character whose code is above 200 octal, you must quote it by typing the character Control-q (quoted-insert) first. (This character’s name is normally written C-q for short.) There are two ways to use C-q:

• C-q followed by any non-graphic character (even C-g) inserts that character.
• C-q followed by a sequence of octal digits inserts the character with the specified octal character code. You can use any number of octal digits; any non-digit terminates the sequence. If the terminating character is RET, it serves only to terminate the sequence; any other non-digit is itself used as input after terminating the sequence. (The use of octal sequences is disabled in ordinary non-binary Overwrite mode, to give you a convenient way to insert a digit instead of overwriting with it.)

A numeric argument to C-q specifies how many copies of the quoted character should be inserted (see Arguments).

Customization information: DEL, in most modes, runs the command backward-or-forward-delete-char; RET runs the command newline, and self-inserting printing characters run the command self-insert, which inserts whatever character was typed to invoke it. Some major modes rebind DEL to other commands.