How do I move forward or backward by sentence in Vim?

Explanation

The ) and ( motions move by sentence boundaries. A sentence in Vim ends with ., !, or ? followed by whitespace or end of line. This is extremely useful for navigating and editing prose, comments, documentation, and commit messages.

How it works

• ) moves forward to the start of the next sentence
• ( moves backward to the start of the current or previous sentence
• Vim defines a sentence as ending with ., !, or ? followed by a space, tab, or end of line
• Accepts a count: 3) jumps forward 3 sentences

Example

Given this paragraph with the cursor at the start:

Vim is a text editor. It was created by Bram Moolenaar. It is
based on the vi editor.

Pressing ) moves to It was created..., pressing ) again moves to It is based....

Tips

• Use das to delete a sentence (around sentence text object)
• Use cis to change the current sentence
• Combine with operators: d) deletes from cursor to end of sentence
• Works well for editing commit messages, docstrings, and markdown files