most commonly used Emacs commands

M-w copy

C-w cut

C-y paste

C-x 3 two windows

C-x o move cursor

C-x <- ->change to info, etc

C-x C-s save

C-x C-c exit

C-x C-z go to background shell. Then use command “fg” to go back to emacs

C-x [ page front 

C-x ] page end

C-a go to line start

C-e go to line end

C-k cut a line

C-x C-f open file

C-x k close buffer

M-x linum-mode show line number

For the emacs config file that I'm using (~/.emacs): 

F2 go to shell within emacs, shortcut for M-x shell

F5 refresh page

F6 list all emacs opened files

some more useful commands:
highlighting:
The following will highlight until you close the file.

emacs highlight commands
key	command
【Alt+s h .】	highlight-symbol-at-point
【Alt+s h f】	hi-lock-find-patterns
【Alt+s h l】	highlight-lines-matching-regexp
【Alt+s h p】	highlight-phrase
【Alt+s h r】	highlight-regexp
【Alt+s h u】	unhighlight-regexp