Does emacs support multi column editing?

Question

Emacs, like most text editors, supports editing from top to bottom:

word1
word2
word3

but, unlike Microsoft Word, I can't figure out how to edit in two columns:

col1    col2
word1   word2
word3
word4

Note: Editing in the first column does not change the spacing of the second.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

Org mode does. Just create a new file, call M-x org-mode and then paste this in:

* Look! A table! 
| col1   |  col2.  |
| word1 |  word2 |
| word3 |              |
| word4 |              |

Add as many columns as you want and this should behave the way you expect. Look at org-mode's documentation for the key bindings.
http://orgmode.org/manual/Tables.html

Answer 2

I'm not sure if this fits your requirements, but you might take a look at Two Column Editing.