Navigation

Navigating Text Buffers

For navigating a buffer while editing text use the following.

Key bindings for navigating text

Entity % Movement	Begin (Backward)	End (Forward)	Mark	Kill Or Cut
Character	[ C-b]	[ C-f]	[ C-@]	[ C-d]
Word	[ M-b]	[ M-f]	[ M-@]	[ M-d]
Line	[ C-a]	[ C-e]		[ C-k]
Sentence	[ M-a]	[ M-e]		[ M-k]
Paragraph	M-{ }}	[ M-} ]	[ M-h ]	[ M-h C-w]
Page	[ C-x [ ]	[ C-x ] ]	[ C-x C-p]

Notes

Sentence

By default Emacs expects two spaces between sentences. If you prefer to use a single space try M-x customize-variable RET sentence-end-double-space.

Paragraph

By default Emacs expects a blank line between paragraphs.

Page

In "*.el" files and other text files (for example the NEWS file, [C-h n]), text is divided into "pages" delimited by `^L' character. This character can be entered with [C-q C-l]

Navigating Source Code

For navigating source code (see Programming languages) use the following.

Key bindings for navigating code

Entity % Movement	Begin (Backward)	End (Forward)	Mark	Kill Or Cut	Up
sexp	[ C-M-b]	[ C-M-f]	[ C-M-@]	[ C-M-k]	[ C-M-u]
defun	[ C-M-a]	[ C-M-e]	[ C-M-h]	[ C-M-h C-w]

Notes

sexp

These are balanced expressions. For example, in C a block enclosed in a pair of {,} and in Lisp a pair of (, ).

defun

A Lisp function definition.

subword

The use of CamelCaseIdentifiers is common in some programming languages. You can enable subword-mode to use the standard word-based commands such as [M-f] and [M-b] to navigate subwords delimited by capital letters.