Jiminy Cricket

Emacs keybindings are not simple. But they are discoverable and memorable, once you get past the initial shock at least. The Guide-Key package helps with that by popping up a new window displaying a list of keys available at the current moment.

(use-package guide-key
  :ensure t
  :pin melpa-stable
  :diminish guide-key-mode
  :init
  (setq guide-key/guide-key-sequence
        '("C-c" "C-x r" "C-x 4" "C-x 5" "C-x 8"))
  :config
  (guide-key-mode 1))

For instance, while writing this blog I can press C-x r and receive a list of possibilities shown below:

You'll notice that we used the :diminish option above, with the name of the minor mode as its value. That indicates that Diminish should omit the minor mode from the mode line entirely. Alternatively, I could have offered an abbreviation such as GK.