How do I progressively expand or contract a visual selection by text objects?

Explanation

In visual mode, repeating text object motions progressively expands the selection. You can use counted text objects to select exactly the scope you need — from a word to a sentence to a paragraph — all within a single visual selection.

How it works

• v — enter visual mode
• aw — select a word (including surrounding space)
• as — expand to select a sentence
• ap — expand to select a paragraph
• Count prefix: v3aw selects 3 words at once
• o — jump cursor to other end of selection to adjust

Example

Text: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Cursor on 'brown':
  viw → 'brown'
  vaw → 'brown '
  v3aw → 'brown fox jumps '
  vas → 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.'

Tips

• Use o to toggle which end of the selection you're extending
• In visual mode, pressing iw, aw, i(, a( etc. adjusts the selection
• gn selects the next search match and can be expanded with n
• Treesitter in Neovim provides incremental_selection for syntax-aware expansion