These are the commands that I have started to adopt after having started with Vim. They are listed in the order that I started to adopt them.

March 2015

1. :set autoindent maintain indentation on carriage return
2. a similar to i though insert text after cursor
3. 5o<esc> insert five blank lines below the current line
4. 5O<esc> insert five blank lines above the current line
   • it's a capital O not a
5. 5k Go up five lines.
6. 20i<space><esc> insert 20 spaces
7. <ctrl>[ same as <esc> only easier to reach
8. "*p paste from the Windows clipboard
9. "*yy copy to the Windows clipboard
10. G go to end of file
11. gg go to start of file
12. :set list show control characters except whitespace
13. :set nolist hide control characters
14. :syntax on+:set syntax=whitespace show tabs & spaces
15. zz center the cursor vertically
16. Shift+j join two line (i.e. delete carriage return)
17. Ctrl+o execute normal command without leaving insert mode see also
18. dd to cut an entire line, then p or P to paste it below/above
19. :help substitute view the help pages for find/replace

Notes

• " gives us register access. See these two StackOverflow answers.