GNU Emacs Manual - Blank Lines

Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.

## Blank Lines

Here are special commands and techniques for putting in and taking out blank lines.

`C-o`
  Insert one or more blank lines after the cursor (`open-line`).
`C-x C-o`
  Delete all but one of many consecutive blank lines (`delete-blank-lines`).

When you want to insert a new line of text before an existing line, you can do it by typing the new line of text, followed by `RET`. However, it may be easier to see what you are doing if you first make a blank line and then insert the desired text into it. This is easy to do using the key `C-o` (`open-line`), which inserts a newline after point but leaves point in front of the newline. After `C-o`, type the text for the new line. `C-o F O O` has the same effect as `F O O `RET``, except for the final location of point.

You can make several blank lines by typing `C-o` several times, or by giving it a numeric argument to tell it how many blank lines to make. See section Numeric Arguments, for how. If you have a fill prefix, then `C-o` command inserts the fill prefix on the new line, when you use it at the beginning of a line. See section The Fill Prefix.

The easy way to get rid of extra blank lines is with the command `C-x C-o` (`delete-blank-lines`). `C-x C-o` in a run of several blank lines deletes all but one of them. `C-x C-o` on a solitary blank line deletes that blank line. When point is on a nonblank line, `C-x C-o` deletes any blank lines following that nonblank line.

Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.