Typing the untypeable
The classics are older than your keyboard.
Project Gutenberg texts keep their original typography: em dashes, curly quotes, the accents in fiancée and naïve, ligatures like æther. None of those have keys — but Vim has had an answer since before Unicode was cool: digraphs.
In insert mode, press Ctrl-K followed by two characters. Ctrl-K-M types an em dash. Ctrl-Ke' types é. The result matches the book's character exactly, so gutenberg-typist scores it green like any other keystroke.
Punctuation
| name | digraph | |
|---|---|---|
| — | em dash | -M |
| – | en dash | -N |
| ‘ | left single quote | '6 |
| ’ | right single quote / apostrophe | '9 |
| “ | left double quote | "6 |
| ” | right double quote | "9 |
| … | ellipsis | ,. |
| « | left guillemet | << |
| » | right guillemet | >> |
| ¿ | inverted question mark | ?I |
| ¡ | inverted exclamation | !I |
The quote mnemonics: 6 opens, 9 closes — the
digits look like the quotes.
Accented letters
One pattern covers them all: the letter, then a mark that looks like the accent. Works for any letter, upper or lower case.
| mark | accent | examples |
|---|---|---|
| ' | acute | é á — e' a' |
| ! | grave | è à — e! a! |
| > | circumflex | ê ô î û â — e> o> i> u> a> |
| : | diaeresis / umlaut | ë ï ö ü — e: i: o: u: |
| ? | tilde | ñ — n? |
| , | cedilla | ç — c, |
Ligatures & symbols
| name | digraph | |
|---|---|---|
| æ | ae ligature (æther, mediæval) | ae |
| Æ | AE ligature | AE |
| œ | oe ligature (manœuvre) | oe |
| Π| OE ligature | OE |
| £ | pound sterling | Pd |
| ° | degree | DG |
| § | section | SE |
| † | dagger | /- |
| ‡ | double dagger | /= |
| ½ | one half | 12 |
| ¼ | one quarter | 14 |
| ¾ | three quarters | 34 |
Everything else
:digraphs lists every code Vim knows.
:help digraphs explains the system. And any character at all can
be typed by codepoint: Ctrl-Vu then four hex digits —
Ctrl-Vu2014 is the em dash again.
-- for dashes and straight quotes. You'll meet these
characters in the books that kept their original typography — which are the
best ones to type.