Am I the only one that feels that this article isn't HN worthy? Everything that is said is well documented in the official documentation and it isn't a guide at all.<p>The information in it will get a beginner nowhere without reading the tutorial and if he reads the tutorial the information in this article becomes meaningless to him.
A much better (alternative to the C-h t tutorial, which is very good) intro to the bare essentials is the beginner articles from Mastering Emacs:<p><a href="http://www.masteringemacs.org/articles/category/beginner/" rel="nofollow">http://www.masteringemacs.org/articles/category/beginner/</a>
Regardless of your stance in the editor wars, the 'first' key or key chord you need to know about is what it takes to leave the application. How to get in and how to get out first--- everything else second. The chord BTW is ^x^c I suppose you could claim that ^z leaves as well, but it is not quite the same thing. Although many never kill emacs, they just pause and return...
In Emacs docs, <Ctrl> is C and (by default, usually) <Alt> is M (for meta).<p><pre><code> C-x C-c : quit emacs
C-g C-g C-g : cancel any crazy mess you got yourself into
C-x C-f : open a file (read a file into the current buffer)
C-x C-s : save current file (buffer)</code></pre>