How do I navigate by whitespace-separated WORDs instead of Vim's default word boundaries?

Explanation

Vim has two definitions of a "word": a lowercase word (letters, digits, underscores — or sequences of other non-blank characters) and an uppercase WORD (any non-blank characters). The uppercase motions W, B, and E jump by WORDs — they only stop at whitespace, ignoring punctuation, hyphens, dots, and other special characters.

word vs WORD

The motions

When to use WORD motions

• Navigating URLs: W jumps over the entire https://example.com/path?q=1 in one keystroke
• File paths: W treats /home/user/.config/vim/vimrc as a single unit
• CLI flags: W jumps over --long-option=value at once
• Faster movement through dense code with lots of punctuation

Tips

• WORD motions work as operator targets: dW deletes to the start of the next WORD, cE changes to the end of the current WORD
• iW and aW are the corresponding text objects: diW deletes the WORD under the cursor, daW includes surrounding whitespace
• The iskeyword option controls what w/b/e consider part of a word, but W/B/E always use whitespace only
• When in doubt, W is faster for coarse navigation; w is more precise for fine editing