The tip doesn't work for single character words, but this does: nnoremap qw :silent! normal "zyiw:let @z="'".@z."'"cwzb nnoremap qd :silent! normal "zyiw:let @z="\"".@z."\""cwzb Blows away the "z" register, though. I use the following for quoting visual selections (keeps all registers intact) vmap qs :call Quote("'") vmap qd :call Quote('"') function! Quote(quote) let save = @" silent normal gvy let @" = a:quote . @" . a:quote silent normal gvp let @" = save endfunction Here is what I think is the nicest solution for a word-quoting macro. nnoremap " ciw""" vnoremap " c"""