The basic paste command in Emacs is:

  • C-y (hold Control and press y) — this is called yank , and it pastes the most recently killed/copied text.

If you want to cycle through earlier copied texts (the kill ring), you can press:

  • M-y (hold Alt/Meta and press y) immediately after C-y to replace the last paste with older entries.

On most systems, this is the standard way to “paste” in Emacs, both in normal editing and in many Emacs-based terminals or modes.