Vim normal mode: why is j/k jumping paragraphs instead of lines?

Question

So i've copied and pasted text from my browser, and when i hit j/k, it does not bring the cursor up/down single lines like it's supposed to:

COLLEYVILLE, Texas (AP) — The rabbi of a Texas synagogue where a gunman took hostages during livestreamed services said Monday that he threw a chair at his captor before escaping with two others after an hourslong standoff, crediting past security training for getting himself and his congregants out safely.

Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker told “CBS Mornings” that he let the gunman inside the suburban Fort Worth synagogue Saturday because he appeared to need shelter. He said the man was not threatening or suspicious at first. Later, he heard a gun click as he was praying.

Another man held hostage, Jeffrey R. Cohen, described the ordeal on Facebook on Monday.
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“First of all, we escaped. We weren’t released or freed,” said Cohen, who was one of four people in the synagogue for services that many other Congregation Beth Israel members were wat

instead, it hops from the first line of each paragraphs in both directions. Why is it doing this? Are there hidden ASCI characters in the page?

Answer 1

Vim is not really jumping paragraphs... These are actually really long lines.

The default behavior is for Vim to wrap long lines, so they might end up taking multiple lines in your screen, but they're really just long single lines.

You can tweak some settings to actually be able to see that more clearly. For example, you can use :set nowrap to have Vim stop wrapping long lines, which would show them as the long single lines they actually are. Navigating right would actually shift your screen in that direction.

Another option is to use :set number to show line numbers in the left margin, which would actually show you the line number only on screen lines where an actual line is starting, which also makes it pretty visible that line wrapping is what's happening here.

You might also like to learn about the gj and gk commands, which will navigate down and up in screen lines and can be pretty helpful to navigate these very long lines when there's wrapping.