Working with Vim

Vim for Writing

Vim is my primary tool for writing, it is great not just for programming, but also for writing documentation, blog posts, or whatever you need. See the Vimwiki section for how to use Vim for all your notes.

Spellcheck

See :help spell Vim has a built-in spellcheck, by default it is off. You can turn it on using :setlocal spell. To turn it off again, use :set nospell

I map F5 to toggle spellcheck using the following in my config:

" Toggle Spellcheck
:noremap <F5> :setlocal spell! spelllang=en_us<CR>

With spellcheck on, the misspelled words are highlighted.

Use ]s to navigate to the next misspelled word.

Use z= to open a list of suggested text to replace misspelled word.

Use zg to add the word to your spellfile, telling vim it is correctly spelled.

Grammar Checking

The Wordy plugin is a collection of special dictionaries that are used to provide a wide range of grammar rules to check against. For example, business-jargon, weasel words, or passive-voice to name a few.

Run the plugin to check the text using :Wordy [rule] typing tab will show the full list of available rules.

For example, :Wordy passive-voice will check the text for use of the passive voice and highlight similar to spellcheck. Use ]s to navigate to the highlighted text.

Use :NoWordy to turn off, or since Wordy uses the same spellcheck mechanism, I use my F5 mapping to turn off.

See the Wordy Github repository for full documentation.

Word Counts

Type g ctrl-g to get a list of document information including character and wordcount.

I use the Lualine plugin for a fancy status line. See my dotfiles for my configuration to display the word count.

How to type digraphs

See :help digraph A digraph is a character that cannot by entered by an ordinary keyboard. For example, with standard US keyboards digraphs are the numerous accent characters not part of the English language.

To type a digraph, in INSERT mode, type ctrl-k {char} {char}

The first character is the letter, the second the additional mark. For example, to add an tilde over an n, I would type ctrl-k n ~ which gives me the Spanish ñ character.

Here are a set of the most common examples, see :help digraphs-default for a more complete list.

! or ` : Grave accent à è ì ò ù

' : Acute accent á é í ó ú

> : Circumflex â ĉ ê ĝ ô û

? or ~ : Tilde ã ñ

: : Diaeresis ä ë ö ü

Extended ASCII

Digraphs are also used beyond accents; they include extended ASCII characters. Here are a few fun ones.

0u and 0U : ☺ and ☻

*1 and *2 : ☆ and ★

OK and XX : ✓ and ✗

See the full table of all digraphs using :digraphs