How do I center or right-align lines of text using Vim's built-in Ex commands?

Explanation

Vim has three built-in Ex formatting commands — :left, :center, and :right — that align text within a specified column width. These work on any range, including visual selections, making them handy for formatting plain text, comments, headers, and ASCII art without any plugins.

How it works

• :[range]center [width] — centers each line within [width] columns (default 80)
• :[range]right [width] — right-aligns each line to [width] columns
• :[range]left [indent] — left-aligns and optionally adds [indent] spaces
• The range can be % (whole file), '<,'> (visual selection), or any line range

Example

Given text:

hello world
foo
a longer line of text

After :%center 40:

            hello world
                 foo
         a longer line of text

After :%right 40:

                             hello world
                                     foo
                   a longer line of text

Tips

• Select lines visually with V then press : — the range '<,'> is prefilled, so just type center 79 and press <CR>
• Combine with gq (:set textwidth=79) for paragraph reflow followed by centering
• These commands are especially useful for centering section headers in plain-text files, configuration comments, or formatted reports
• The width argument defaults to the value of textwidth if set, or 80 otherwise