Updated on December 28, 2021 in #vim

Format Paragraphs to 80 Characters with Vim (No Plugins Needed)

When using the built-in gaqp motion and a custom mapping you can create hard line breaks at a custom text width.

I’ve technically written over a million words of Markdown between blog posts, documentation and course notes.

One thing that I do all the time is format Markdown paragraphs to 80 characters. Vim lets us do that by default with the gqap motion. We can do it 1 on paragraph or any selection of text. You can also hook it up to a custom mapping to make this process easier.

# Demo Video

Configuration

" Format paragraph (selected or not) to 80 character lines.
nnoremap <Leader>g gqap
xnoremap <Leader>g gqa

Timestamps

• 0:08 – Limiting the width of a line is useful
• 0:53 – Demo’ing the behavior that we’re going to get
• 1:16 – Why not do this automatically on save? Well…
• 3:16 – Checking out the mappings in my vimrc and going over gq motions
• 5:58 – Looking at gq’s help menu and adjusting the text width if you want
• 7:24 – Investigating gqap in Vim’s help menu

Reference Links

• https://github.com/nickjj/dotfiles
• https://jekyllrb.com/
• Direct link to the custom Vim mappings

What’s your favorite gq motion? Let me know below.