Table 2-8 summarizes clipboard-related commands.
Table 2-8. Clipboard commands
| Keystrokes | Command name | Action |
|---|---|---|
| (none) | clipboard-kill-region | Cut region and place both in kill ring and on system clipboard. |
| (none) | clipboard-yank | Paste text from clipboard. |
| (none) | clipboard-kill-ring-save | Copy text to clipboard. |
2.5 Editing Tricks and Shortcuts
Now that you've learned the basics of editing—moving the cursor to the right position, deleting, copying, and moving text—you can learn some tricks that make editing easier.
2.5.1 Fixing Transpositions
The most common typo involves the transposition of two letters, and most typos are noticed immediately after you make them. Pressing C-t transposes two letters, to put them in the right order:
| Before C-t | After C-t |
|---|---|
the best of timse, it |
the best of times_ it |
To transpose two letters, put the cursor on the second of the two letters to be transposed. Press C-t. (If you often transpose letters, word abbreviation mode, discussed in Chapter 3, cleans up typos automatically.)
You can also transpose two words, lines, paragraphs, or sentences. To transpose two words, put the cursor between the two words and press M-t. After Emacs has finished, the cursor follows the second of the two (transposed) words:
| Before M-t | After M-t |
|---|---|
one three_two |
one two three_ |
Interestingly, Emacs moves words, but not punctuation. Let's say that two names are reversed:
| Before M-t | After M-t |
|---|---|
Charles, Dickens |
Dickens, Charles_ |
To transpose two lines, put the cursor anywhere on the second of the two and press C-x C-t. Emacs moves the second before the first:
| Before C-x C-t | After C-x C-t |
|---|---|
second line |
first line |
first line |
second line |
third line |
third line |
Table 2-9 summarizes the transposition commands.
Table 2-9. Transposition commands
| Keystrokes | Command name | Action |
|---|---|---|
| C-t | transpose-chars | Transpose two letters. |
| M-t | transpose-words | Transpose two words. |
| C-x C-t | transpose-lines | Transpose two lines. |
| (none) | transpose-sentences | Transpose two sentences. |
| (none) | transpose-paragraphs | Transpose two paragraphs. |
2.5.2 Changing Capitalization
Mistakes in capitalization are also common and annoying typing errors. Emacs has some special commands for fixing capitalization. To capitalize the first letter of any word, put the cursor on the first letter and press M-c. To put a word in lowercase, press M-l. To put a word in uppercase, press M-u. The key bindings here are mnemonic: Meta followed by c for capitalize, l for lowercase, and u for uppercase. Note that if the cursor is in the middle of a word, Emacs takes action only from the character under the cursor to the end of the word. You can easily use M-l to lowercase the second half of a word, and so on.
If you notice that the word you just typed is incorrect, you can use the same commands prefaced by Meta- (press and hold Meta followed by a hyphen). This corrects the previous word without moving the cursor. If the cursor is positioned in the middle of a word, using Meta- before a command causes it to work on the first part of the word (the part preceding the cursor), rather than the part following the cursor.
For example, starting with abcdefghij:
| If you press: | You'll get: |
|---|---|
| Meta - u | abcdEFGHIJ_ |
| Meta - M-u | ABCDefghij |
| M-c | abcdEfghij_ |
| Meta - M-c | Abcdefghij |