12.2 Yanking
Yanking means reinserting text previously killed. The usual way to move or copy text is to kill it and then yank it elsewhere.
C-y
Yank the last kill into the buffer, at point ( yank).
M-y
Either replace the text just yanked with an earlier batch of killed
text ( yank-pop), or allow to select from the list of
previously-killed batches of text. See Yanking Earlier Kills.
C-M-w
Cause the following command, if it is a kill command, to append to the
previous kill ( append-next-kill). See Appending Kills.
The basic yanking command is C-y ( yank). It inserts
the most recent kill, leaving the cursor at the end of the inserted
text. It also sets the mark at the beginning of the inserted text,
without activating the mark; this lets you jump easily to that
position, if you wish, with C-u C-SPC (see The Mark Ring).
With a plain prefix argument ( C-u C-y), the command instead
leaves the cursor in front of the inserted text, and sets the mark at
the end. Using any other prefix argument specifies an earlier kill;
e.g., C-u 4 C-y reinserts the fourth most recent kill.
See Yanking Earlier Kills.
On graphical displays and on capable text-mode displays, C-y
first checks if another application has placed any text in the system
clipboard more recently than the last Emacs kill. If so, it inserts
the clipboard’s text instead. Thus, Emacs effectively treats “cut”
or “copy” clipboard operations performed in other applications like
Emacs kills, except that they are not recorded in the kill ring.
See “Cut and Paste” Operations on Graphical Displays, for details.