Wrap Existing Text at 80 Characters in Vim

You have an existing block of text or code in vim. You want to re-format it to wrap to 80-characters.

:set textwidth=80

You might want this setting to apply automatically within certain file types like Markdown:

au BufRead,BufNewFile *.md setlocal textwidth=80

We have that setting in thoughtbot/dotfiles.

Select the lines of text you want to re-format:

v

Reformat it:

gq

Learn more:

:h gq

What’s next

If you found this useful, you might also enjoy:

• Sorting Lines Alphabetically in Vim
• Onramp to Vim