Emacs Selections

Selections in Emacs are interesting, because while you can use the mouse and drag a selection, you can do somewhat more targeted and sophisticated operations as well.

It's a tension between very low cognitive load (point-click-drag), but lots of hand movements, and high cognitive load (selecting a specific semantic region, so you have to recognize it) and small hand movements which in theory should be quicker.

So, you can select (and therefore cut or copy) a paragraph by

• Recognizing you're in a paragraph
• Using C-up or M-{ to move to the start of the paragraph.
• C-SPC to set the mark
• C-down or M-} to move to the end of the paragraph

I'm not convinced that the mouseless way is faster on a desktop, but it's worth it on a laptop since the mouse is difficult to use.