It's very common to need to comment out a range of lines, let's say in a shell script. One way to do this is to move to the first line and type: I# (insert # as the first non-blank character of the line) Then use a series of: j. (moving down and repeat the previous command/change) However, this is tedious; using j.j.j. ... Another way is to determine the line numbers of the first and last line. You can use the :f ex command to display these; or you can temporarily use :set nu to enable "number mode" and :set nonu to disable when you're done. For example: