How do I center, right-align, or left-align lines of text within a fixed column width using Ex commands?

Explanation

Vim has built-in Ex commands for text alignment: :center, :right, and :left. These are especially useful for formatting prose, ASCII banners, structured comments, and tabular text—without needing a plugin.

How it works

• :{range}center {width} — centers each line in the range, padding with spaces to fit within {width} columns (defaults to 'textwidth')
• :{range}right {width} — right-aligns lines to the given column width
• :{range}left {indent} — left-aligns lines, removing excess leading whitespace (optional {indent} sets the indent level)

All three commands accept any Ex range. Omit the range to act on the current line.

Example

Given these lines selected visually:

Hello
World

Running :'<,'>center 40 produces:

                 Hello
                 World

Running :'<,'>right 40 produces:

                                  Hello
                                  World

Tips

• Use :%center 80 to center every line in the file at width 80
• Combine with visual line mode (V) to select paragraphs before centering
• :left without a width strips all leading whitespace from each line
• If {width} is omitted, Vim uses 'textwidth' (defaulting to 80 if 'textwidth' is 0)