These are some of the useful settings and functions I use when working with vim. vimrc settings if has("gui_running") else set background=dark endif Make sure Vim uses the light colorscheme when in gvim, but the dark one when in console mode. set colorcolumn=+1: highlight the column after the maximum text width set ignorecase set smartcase Only do case-sensitive searches if the search text has uppercase characters. set laststatus=2 autocmd BufNewFile,BufRead *.md setlocal tw=80 nocindent statusline=%<%f\ %h%m%r[%{wordcount().words}\ words]%=%-14.(%l,%c%V%)\ %P Whenever I'm editing a Markdown document, set the status line to display the number of words in the document and set line width at 80 characters. commands gqap: format the current paragraph according to word-wrapping rules "+y: copy text specifically into the system's clipboard magg=G`a: indent the entire file, but return to the place where you started