Ask HN: Any useful tips for writing in Emacs?

I bound fly spell to ctrl-; to bring up a list of the misspellings and cycle from the first through the rest for misspelling closest to the cursor.

That means if I'm typing and I don't realize the misspelling until the next sentence, I can correct it WITHOUT moving the cursor. Once you do this, you can't go back!

Great idea. Would you like to share the code, please?

I implemented the suggestion with this code in my .emacs file:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-<;>") 'ispell-word)

You can move paragraphs around with M-<up> and M-<down>. It also works on headlines/plain lists.

Just discovered this yesterday and wish I had known about it earlier.

Do you use org-mode?[1] It's perfect for outlining and managing lots of information. Once you've written your paper, you can easily export it to HTML, PDF (through LaTeX) or plain text to be copied into a Word document, if that's the way you swing.

[1] http://orgmode.org/

Auto-fill-mode and follow-mode are useful. If you write Unicode characters (and don't have a mac) C-x 8 <Enter> is useful, too (tab completion!).