A remembered position in a buffer. Point and mark delimit the region, whichever comes first. The mark can remain after the selection is deactivated; it is not copied text. See Selecting and checking text.
The text between point and mark, including any selected spaces and newlines. The character at its end is excluded. The active region is the current selection; some commands can also use an inactive mark. Establish a fresh region before cutting. See Selection boundaries and activation.
Emacs’s usual active-selection behaviour, used by the editing examples. It is unrelated to the Transient package that supplies settings menus. See Using the region through speech and The mark and the region in the GNU Emacs Manual.
Store a passage in the kill ring while leaving its source text unchanged. The destination becomes an independent text copy when you paste it. See Copying between buffers.
Remove text and keep it in the kill ring for later insertion. Some deletion commands do not keep that copy. Killing a buffer is a different operation: it closes the buffer rather than copying its contents. See Moving text safely.
Insert text from the kill ring, or through configured clipboard integration, at point. It changes the destination buffer, not automatically its saved file. See Checking a paste.
Emacs’s shared history of copied and cut text. It can contain more than the latest passage, including text placed there by inspection commands. It is not a permanent backup or the same store as the system clipboard. See Choosing an earlier copy.
The operating system’s text-transfer facility. Its connection to Emacs depends on the display session and configuration; a new external copy can affect the next paste. See Testing clipboard exchange.
Reverse recorded edits in the selected buffer. It does not reverse
a settings save or an action already sent to another application. When
listening between successive corrections, use the recovery guide’s
undo-only procedure. See Undo and spoken inspection.