Only C-something works, no? I'm also still trying M-b / M-f regularly (with either Option or Command for Meta, which has surprising consequences every single time.)

C-t works though, and that's awesome to correct typos.

Ah, so here's the trick. However I have my modifier keys set up for my external (non-Mac) keyboard means I can't really use them. I use my Caps Lock in Emacs for the C modifier, but in OS X my Alt key is the one that works in normal text inputs.

My favorite one is C-t (transpose)

And of course there's kill C-k and yank C-y

But sadly, no C-w.

I've never used emacs - Is that 'select word'? I have that system-wide by putting

  "^w" = (selectWord:);

into '~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict'. There's a load of information online about the customisation that can be put in this file. Here's a comment of mine with some links in it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6718604

Annoyingly, Xcode stopped paying attention to this file at some point around version 4, so now you have to maintain a separate version for that.