The explanation for that behavior is that instead of a cursor, emacs has a mark and a point. If you want to view something else without losing your place, you c

The explanation for that behavior is that instead of a cursor, emacs has a mark and a point. If you want to view something else without losing your place, you can leave the mark behind and then jump back. The main benefit of this is that you get to find the "something else" quickly using the full suite of normal search and movement commands. It's also nice that you can jump through the stack of past marks, not just one.