Q:

What is the difference between a blank line and an empty line in vim?

I just read the help section for paragraph. It says that paragraph starts after an empty line. At the end it also mentions that the same does not apply to blank line.
I am trying to separate paragraphs by inserting "no character lines" wherever I want to break the text into paragraphs. When I used the %norm vipJ command the formatted text did not turn out as expected.

What is the difference between blank line and empty line?
How can I create an empty line?
How can I convert blank lines into empty lines?

This will help make the %norm vipJ work the way I want it to work. Thanks in advance.

A:

An empty line is zero characters long, whereas a blank line consists entirely of whitespaces.
o and O insert a blank line (and switch to insert mode). If you don't want to switch to insert mode, see https://superuser.com/questions/607163/inserting-a-blank-line-in-vim

