How do I simply replace a visual mode selection I've made in Vim with any amount of new words?

Today, I'm in a line and need to replace a few words to clarify an idea, like so:

Superuser is THIS IS THE TEXT I WANT TO REPLACE awesome.

After visual selection, however, being the novice I am, I hit r and type my intended replacement text:

Superuser is aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa awesome.

Uh oh! It's singularly replaced every character position of my visual selection with exactly just the first letter of the intended text I wanted as a replacement. Would a modifier help maybe? Shift R? Nope. What gives?

2 Answers

Use c to change, in lieu of r to replace. Having made my visual selection, keying c, I can type whatever I want, and I'm all good.

Superuser is absolutely awesome.

The only caveat I might add for my experience was that advancing my visual mode selection with w also took the first character at the end of my selection of the text that I did not want to be affected. The solution I found for this was to advance my selection using e in lieu of w, to trim the selection more properly to the end of the word. Hope this helps somebody.

From :help v_r:

 {Visual}r{char} Replace all selected characters by {char}.

Trying random keystrokes is not exactly the best way to learn Vim, or any comparably feature-rich program for that matter.

Instead, here is a more fruitful approach:

1. If you didn't already, do $ vimtutor as many times as needed to get the basics right.
2. As instructed at the end of vimtutor, level up to the user manual :help user-manual. It will guide you progressively through every feature, from basic to advanced. This not a novel: go at your own pace, skip chapters, come back to them later, and, most importantly, experiment along the way.
3. Keep an eye on anti-patterns and inefficient actions, find improvements, practice. Rinse. Repeat.