Next: Learning how to do something, Up: Getting help

### 3.1 I'm just starting Emacs; how do I do basic editing?

Type `C-h t` to invoke the self-paced tutorial. Just typing `C-h` enters the help system. Starting with Emacs 22, the tutorial is available in many foreign languages such as French, German, Japanese, Russian, etc. Use `M-x help-with-tutorial-spec-language <RET>` to choose your language and start the tutorial.

Your system administrator may have changed `C-h` to act like <DEL> to deal with local keyboards. You can use `M-x help-for-help` instead to invoke help. To discover what key (if any) invokes help on your system, type `M-x where-is <RET> help-for-help <RET>`. This will print a comma-separated list of key sequences in the echo area. Ignore the last character in each key sequence listed. Each of the resulting key sequences (e.g. <F1> is common) invokes help.

Emacs help works best if it is invoked by a single key whose value should be stored in the variable `help-char`.