Copy a word and paste it over other words: Copy a line and paste it over other lines: Deleting, changing and yanking text copies the affected text to the unnamed register (""). Yanking text also copies the text to register 0 ("0). So the command yiw copies the current word to "" and to "0. Typing viw selects the current word, then pressing p pastes the unnamed register over the visual selection. The visual selection that was just replaced is then stored in the default unnamed register. let mapleader="," xnoremap p "_dP And then the workflow would be: yiw, move, viw,p, move again, viw,p, etc