Emacs remember text selection

Question

I decided that I was ready to try something new, after a few years of using gEdit for most of my coding needs, and try to learn using Emacs. I knew this would be difficult,

Answer 1

Try typing C-x C-x after Emacs unselects it.

Then, instead of hitting tab (I never knew that tab does what you said! That's totally whacked.), do M-8 C-x C-i. Pity it's so many keys, but it ought to do what you want -- namely, shove everything over 8 columns. Obviously replace the M-8 with something else if you want some other number of columns.