8.1 Section 8.1: The Cursor and the Idea of Point
Emacs has a special name for the current position of the cursor. This location, within the buffer, is called POINT (not "the point", just "point".) The idea of point is important because it is at this location that whatever you type is inserted into the buffer. When you read Emacs documentation and the descriptions in the Help facility, you will see many references to point.
Although the cursor is under or on a particular character, point is actually between two characters : the one at the cursor position and ...