Help for Ex commands is always listed with the colon included:
:help :display
Help for settings is always listed with surrounding quotes, as Carpetsmoker already described:
:help 'display'
Specific help files are listed by their file name:
:help undo.txt
(cf. :help undo
)
Help for built-in functions is listed with trailing parentheses:
:help split()
(cf. :help split
)
Documentation for Vim's command arguments (i.e. those passed when invoking Vim from the shell) is listed with preceding hyphens:
:help -r
(cf. :help r
)
Help for subtopics within the documentation for various Vim features usually has an appropriate hyphenated prefix:
:help hl-Menu
(cf. :help Menu
)
:help syn-on
(cf. :help on
)
:help help-writing
(cf. :help writing
)
Similarly, help topics within plugins generally use the plugin's name as a prefix:
:help surround-mappings
Finally, something I didn't realise until I'd been using Vim for a while* is that the help includes topics for the default mappings in all modes.
For example, Ctrl-v
does something very different in Normal mode to what it does in Insert mode.
To get to the different topics, use the i_
, c_
, and v_
prefixes for Insert, Command, and Visual mode mappings, respectively, or no prefix for the Normal mode mapping:
:help ctrl-v
:help i_ctrl-v
:help c_ctrl-v
:help v_ctrl-v
* ...despite the fact that it's virtually the first thing you'll read if you type a plain :help
with no arguments! See "Get specific help" a few paragraphs down. (:help help-context
)