What is the difference between ' and ` when jumping to a mark in Vim?

Explanation

Vim provides two distinct ways to jump to a mark, and they behave differently: the apostrophe ' jumps to the first non-blank character of the marked line, while the backtick ` jumps to the exact cursor position where the mark was set. This distinction matters when you care about column position, not just line.

How it works

• 'a — jumps to the beginning of the line containing mark a
• `a — jumps to the exact line and column where mark a was set
• The same applies to all marks: lowercase a–z, uppercase A–Z, and special marks like `. (last change) or `[ (start of last yank)

Example

Given this file, with mark a set on the w of world:

hello world
     ^
     mark a set here (column 6)

• 'a moves the cursor to column 0 (first non-blank of the line)
• `a moves the cursor to column 6 (exact mark position)

Tips

• Use ` (backtick) in operator commands for precise text objects: d`a deletes from the cursor to the exact position of mark a, while d'a deletes from cursor to the start of the line
• Special mark `. jumps to the exact position of the last change; use '. to jump to the line of the last change instead
• Lowercase marks (a–z) are file-local; uppercase marks (A–Z) work across files