vim 101 - cheat sheet

Oct 13, 2026

Vim 101 August 2020 presents a practical cheat sheet for Emacs users learning Vim-style modal editing. It organizes editing operations into motion, selection, and transformations, focusing on how to move and navigate efficiently and how to select text regions using coherent units. The guide explains key modes (Normal, Insert, Visual, Replacement), core keystrokes to switch modes, and early principles for combining minimal bindings to perform edits quickly while returning to Normal mode for navigation.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryPresentations

FormatPDF

Pages8

Reading Time3 min

AccessFree to download

Overview

Modes

Normal and Insert modes

Visual and Replacement modes

Motion

Vim 101 August 2020 Former Emacs user here. Trying to uncover the basics of Vim keybindings, especially for selection, movement and action on text objects, when using Doom Emacs (yes, just cheating, I'm still an Emacs guy) . Overview Hereafter, I will consider only three kinds of operation in text editing related tasks: motion, selection and transformation. Motion or movement refers to moving around in the buffer. Transformations are applied to text objects, whether it is a single object (e.g., adjacent word or line) or a visual selection. Finally, selection refers to the restriction of the whole buffer to a particular region of text, using either character, word, line, sentence or paragraph as the unit of interest. I will not discuss keybindings speciﬁc of a particular mode (e.g., VCS, Markdown, Org) although I may record some shortcuts speciﬁc toprog-mode in the last section. There are many good references on Vim itself, or Vim best practices.1 In the meantime, here's a nice overview of why Vim may bea good companion for programming stuff, written by Steve Losh: Coming Home to Vim. The document Emacs/Evil for Vim Users provides an excellent introduction to the difference between Emacs and Vim terminolgy (e.g., what does 'yanking' means in Emacs or Vim), and how Evil compares to standard Vim. Finally, I recommend the Vim quick reference card for a handy cheat sheet. Although this document focus on Vim (or Neovim) itself, it is intended as a cheat sheet for Emacs users like me. I have had a hard time switching to modal editing, and I still need some Emacs keybindings, which I also use in other TUI settings, like the terminal (e.g., C-a and C-e to navigate to the begining or end of the line, C-w to delete the previous word) . I've been able to get by without almost ever using Emacs' default keybindings. The exceptions for me are C-g and C-h. Even if you don't plan on learning emacs' keybindings in full, I recommend learning these when starting out.—Fox Kiester Indeed, the C-g shortcut remain important as it allows to break almost everything in Emacs, but the help system is easily accessible using Doom Emacs using the leader key (SPC) only. Likewise, C-c C-c remains ubiquitous in various modes, both in Doom and vanilla Emacs. 1 Neil 2018; Robbins and Hannah 2008. vim 101 2 So far the best implementation of modal editing à la Vim in Emacs is provided by the Evil package. While the defaults are good, you will likely beneﬁt from its companion packages by using either Spacemacs or Doom Emacs, the later being probably closer to Emacs core functionalities. If you ever need to go back to the classical Emacs editing mode, you'll just have to press C-z and you'll get your familiar Emacs keybindings (minus those remapped by the starter kit you choose, if any) . Unless otherwise stated, the following settings apply to both Vim (and mostly Vi) and Emacs (with Evil mode) . Basic stuff Modes We can distinguish two main modes in Vim: Normal mode and Insert mode. Insert mode is for writing text per se while Normal mode is reserved for moving around or altering text under the cursor or nearby. In addition to Normal mode, there is also a Visual mode, which can operate from point under cursor, line or block. Normal and Visual modes are discussed in the next section. The following paragraphs summarize the main commands that can be used to enter Insert mode.2 Whenever we want to write down something, we press i or a to enter Insert mode before or after the current character. To go back to Normal mode, we just have to press . There are, however, many other ways to switch to Insert mode, as detailed in Table 1. | Keys | Description | | --- | --- | | I | Switch to Insert mode at the beginning of the current line | | A | Switch to Insert mode After the end of the current line | | o | Add a new line after the current line and switch to Insert mode | | O | Add a new line before the current line and switch to Insert m

FAQs

What are the three kinds of operations covered in Vim 101?

The guide focuses on motion, selection, and transformations. Motion moves around the buffer, selection restricts the buffer to a text region, and transformations apply edits to text objects or selections.

Which modes are described as main Vim editing modes?

Normal mode and Insert mode are the two main modes, with Visual mode also introduced for selecting text by point, line, or block. Replacement mode is discussed as an Insert-like alternative for overwriting characters.

How do you switch between Normal and Insert mode in Vim?

Press i or a to enter Insert mode, then use to return to Normal mode. Additional commands such as I, A, o, O, and change commands are provided for different insertion points and change scopes.

Oct 13, 2026

Upload by River Wang