Emacs commands consist of a modifier, such as <Ctrl> (CONTROL), <Esc> (ESCAPE), or <META> (META), followed by one or more characters. In this text the following notation is used to describe the keystrokes.
<Ctrl-g> Hold down the <Ctrl> key and press g.<Esc-x> Press <Esc>, release it, and then press x.
Most emacs manuals refer to the <META> key instead of the <Esc> key. But most keyboards don't have a <META> key, so we will refer to <Esc>. If you have a <META> key, you will probably prefer to use it instead of <Esc>. The <META> key works like the <Ctrl> key described above. <Esc-x> is then equivalent to:
<META-x> Hold down the <META> key and press x.
To complete a command you may need to press a carriage return:
<Return> Press the RETURN key.
This key may be labelled ENTER on your keyboard.
All emacs commands, even the simplest ones, have a 'full name': for example forward-word is equivalent to the keystrokes <Esc-f> and forward-char is equivalent to <Ctrl-f>. Many commands only have 'full names', there are no corresponding keystrokes.