28: How do I make Emacs display the current line (or column) number? To find out what line of the buffer you are on right now, do "M-x what-line". Use "M-x goto-line" to go to a specific line. To find the current column number (as well as some other information), type "C-x =" (M-x what-cursor-position). If you use these commands often, you might want to bind them to a key. See question 113 for instructions on how to do that. Typing "C-x l" (or M-x count-lines-page) will also tell you what line you are on, provided the buffer isn't separated into "pages" with C-l characters. In that case, it will only tell you what line of the current "page" you are on. To have Emacs automatically display the current line number of the point in the mode line, do "M-x line-number-mode". You can also put the form (setq line-number-mode t) in your .emacs file to achieve this whenever you start Emacs. Note that Emacs will not display the line number if the buffer is larger than the value of the variable line-number-display-limit. The "column" package by Per Abrahamsen <abraham@iesd.auc.dk> permits the line and column numbers to be displayed in the mode line; see question 87 for how to get this package. None of the vi emulation modes provide the "set number" capability of vi (as far as we know).