Xah Lee has a nice page describing some common configuration settings that you can add to your init.el. It covers such things as how to show line numbers, have sentences end with a single space, and many others (see below). They should be especially useful for n00bs as I often see questions on Twitter or Reddit asking how to do some of the things he demonstrates.
Here is the list of things he shows how to do:
- How to startup emacs without loading any customization?
- How to have standard keyboard shortcuts for Copy and Paste?
- How to have standard keyboard shortcuts for {Open, Close, Save, Save As, Select All, …}?
- How to have redo?
- How to make the copy key copy the current line when there’s no selection?
- How to automatically insert right bracket when left one is typed?
- How to make cursor movement stop in between camelCase words?
- How to make typing delete/overwrites selected text?
- How to have cursor line always highlighted?
- How to have matching parenthesis highlighted? (when the cursor is on one)
- How to remember cursor position?
- How to set default file encoding?
- How to change the default font?
- How to show line numbers?
- How to show the cursor’s column position?
- How to disable emacs’s automatic backup~ file?
- How to disable emacs’s “#auto-save#” backup?
- How to set emacs so that all backups are placed into one backup folder?
- How to stop emacs’s backup changing the file’s creation date of the original file?
- How to refresh file automatically?
- How to open recently opened file in emacs?
- How to restore opened files from last session?
- How to re-open last closed file?
- How to setup tabs, space, indentation?
- How to turn on ruler?
- How to show tabs as in web browser?
- How to have the down arrow key move by screen lines?
- How to have lines soft wrapped at word boundary?
- How to adjust margin?
- How to make lines NOT soft-wrap?
- How to set the spacing between lines?
- How to reformat paragraphs so that lines are not longer than 70 chars?
- How to unfill-paragraph? I want to remove line-break in a paragraph.
- How to have fixed scroll?
- How to save/store minibuffer history?
- How to make sentence ending by single space?
- How to save/store cursor position?
- How to stop cursor blinking?
- How to set cursor to i-beam?
- How to set up emacs so that each file opens in a new window?
- How to set color theme?
- How to show CSS hex color spec in color?
Take a look at the list and see if there’s something there that you’d like to have your Emacs do.