From the course: Learning Vim

Insert text - vi Tutorial

From the course: Learning Vim

Start my 1-month free trial

Insert text

“

- [Instructor] Say you'd like to start a new book. I wrote my book Forging Python using Vim. Open the terminal and write, vim moby.txt. You will start in normal mode. Hit i to enter insert mode. I, and then you can start writing your great next novel. Call me Ishmael. You can use the arrow keys to move around, hit Enter to move to a new line. So the arrow keys, Enter and the usual keyboard, including backspace. However, insert mode is for inserting text. Edits to the text are done in normal mode as you'll see in other chapters. The idea is that in the creative phase you write, you don't care about grammar, spelling, choice of words and many other things. Just get it out there. Then, when you're done with the creative phase, you go back and edit. Insert mode is for the creative phase. Just write text and let it flow. Editing is done in normal mode. To quit, hit Escape or Control + C to get back to normal mode and then colon q exclamation mark and Enter.

Contents