One task that often pops when editing text or code is the need to remove some extra whitespace around the point (the cursor). Emacs has your back!

First, we have the command delete-horizontal-space (bound to M-\) - it deletes all spaces and tabs around the point. With a prefix argument (C-u M-\) the command deletes only the whitespace before the point.

One similar, although a bit less known, command is just-one-space (bound to M-SPC) - it deletes all spaces and tabs around the point, leaving just one space (or N spaces if you supply N as a prefix argument like C-4 M-SPC). If N is negative, the command deletes newlines as well, leaving -N spaces.

One minor snafu with just-one-space is that M-SPC is a no-go on OS X since just about everyone uses it for quick access to Spotlight or switching between languages. You might want to use a different keybinding like this one:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c j") 'just-one-space)

Personally, I find just-one-space to be the more useful command of the two. You can potentially consider remapping delete-horizontal-space to just-one-space, due to it’s convenient keybinding1:

(global-set-key [remap delete-horizontal-space] 'just-one-space)

In Prelude just-one-space is additionally bound to the kk keychord.

  1. At least for OS X users. Obviously in general M-SPC is easier to press. ↩