Modal-Editing

Motions and text objects are where Vim’s productivity actually lives. This post is a full reference — every motion category, every text object, the counts and repeats that combine with them, and worked examples showing why ‘change inside quotes’ is the command you’ll type ten times a day. Second in a four-post series on Vim, following the modal-editing intro and preceding the deep dives on registers and macros.

Modal editing is not a keyboard shortcut scheme. It’s a small language for describing text edits, and once you see it as a language the rest of Vim stops being a pile of trivia. First in a four-post series: this one covers the four core modes, the verb-motion-object grammar, and the smallest set of commands that gets a new user productive by the end of the afternoon. Companion posts go deep on motions and text objects, registers, and macros.