From Vim Tips Wiki

We welcome all contributions. Relax – if we don't like a new tip, we'll change it or delete it!

Quick guidelines

• Please edit a similar tip, if any, rather than creating a new one.
• A tip should be helpful and self-contained.
• Briefly explain how it works, perhaps with an example.
• No links to personal web sites or blogs.
• No email addresses (obfuscated or not).
• Review the general guidelines.

Choosing a title for a new tip

• Titles should be short and simple.
• Avoid all punctuation (it makes an ugly URL).
• Vim is spelt "Vim" not "vim" (but you probably don't need that in the title).
• Use lowercase except for first word and proper nouns.

Enter a title, check for typos, then click 'Create tip'

Guidelines for creating a tip

Please search for tips that might be similar to your topic, before starting. Otherwise, we will have extra work because we will have to delete your tip after copying any unique material to the older, similar tip. Don't worry too much about this – do what you think is best and we'll worry (proposed new tips are discussed on the New tips page, where we decide whether to keep, merge or delete new pages).

A tip should be a helpful tip (not a question). Start by describing what problem the tip solves. The tip should be largely self-contained, and should briefly explain how it works. Where possible, give an example.

A tip should contain material that will be helpful for the foreseeable future. For example, please email a patch to the appropriate maintainer – a patch won't be helpful here.

We strongly discourage links to personal web sites or blogs. You are welcome to make a user page and put one or two links on that page. However, any link on a tip should be to a well-known page of interest to Vim users. Some tips do have links to personal web sites, however, if you investigate, you will probably find that the user is well known to the Vim community, with valuable contributions on the linked web site, or this wiki, or the Vim mailing lists. In some cases, the linked web site is particularly helpful, and its content would not easily be transferred to this wiki – that's fine. But as a rule, a tip should be self-contained, and should refer to external sites only for extra information that is genuinely useful for Vimmers.

We recommend that you do not display your email address. We can't be sure that you are aware of the risks of attracting spam, so we might edit out your address. Also, we don't want the tips cluttered with obfuscated addresses. On the wiki, the best way to allow people to contact you is to create a user page, and to specify an email address as part of your account. Then, if someone changes a page you are watching (such as the Talk of your user page), you will receive a brief email notification from Wikia.

When you create a new tip, please fill in the summary line (below the main area where you enter the tip). Put a very brief statement of what the tip is about, for example, "Using tags effectively", or "Using Vim for email".

Before saving your new tip, click the Show Preview button to see how the tip will appear. Edit the tip to correct any problems, then click Show Preview again. When satisfied, click the Save button. Older-but-wiser users will occasionally copy the text into Vim, where it can be saved to a local file in case problems occur.

If you are new to wikitext, you should read the guidelines to at least learn about the use of <pre>...</pre> tags around code. Remember that content is more important than presentation, so don't worry about the wikitext too much. You don't need the {{TipProposed}} template at the top – we will add that later.