How do I center or right-align a range of lines in Vim?

Explanation

Vim has built-in Ex commands for text alignment: :center, :right, and :left. These work on any line range and are especially handy for formatting comments, banner text, or tabular output — all without leaving Vim.

How it works

• :[range]center [width] — center lines within width columns (default: textwidth or 80)
• :[range]right [width] — right-align lines within width columns
• :[range]left [indent] — left-align lines, setting optional indent level

The [range] can be % for the whole file, a line number, '<,'> for a visual selection, or any standard range.

Example

Given this text:

hello
world

After :%center 30, lines are centered in 30 columns:

             hello
             world

To right-align a visual selection to 40 columns:

:'<,'>right 40

To left-align (de-indent) a block to column zero:

:'<,'>left 0

Tips

• Combine with visual mode: select lines with V, then type :center 60<CR>
• When width is omitted, Vim uses textwidth (or 80 if textwidth is 0)
• These commands are pure text operations — they add or trim leading spaces and do not affect fold state or marks
• Use :left to uniformly remove indent from a block without specifying individual indent amounts