What is blockwise motion in vim?

Question

The cursor-motion section of vim online help (:h) has a section called: FORCING A MOTION TO BE LINEWISE, CHARACTERWISE OR BLOCKWISE, but it doesn't define BLOCKWISE before that. :h blockwise takes you to blockwise visual(ctrl-v) section.

Does blockwise mean plain visual mode and block the text selected using visual mode?

Answer 1

I could be wrong but from my understanding, the help is referring to blockwise and blockwise visual as one and the same.

Linewise (using Shift+v):

Characterwise (just using v):

and Blockwise (using Ctrl+v):

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In terms of forcing a motion to be blockwise, consider a block selection with an insert at the beginning of the block:

Visual block insertion (using Ctrl+v to select the block and Shift+I to insert at the beginning).

You can see the help for the visual block insertion by typing

:h v_b_i