Comment by lloeki

> Take, for example, writing a for loop. I might type:

> for (int

> Then, say, I pause briefly to think about the variable name. If you happened to look over my shoulder at that moment, you would find me in normal mode.

I personally wouldn't but that's only because even in the case above I think in the same way as you mentioned next:

> I just see it as a single action in normal mode that includes the key sequence "i a b c ESC".

in the sense that I will ESC only after I have instered a "semantic-ish unit", which would include the variable name.

So I'd probably enter:

   i for (int foo; foo < 42; foo++) ESC :?foo nnn cw

and think there (and finalise with ESC N . N .)