I have invoked '<escape>:wq<return>' many times; it should be in my muscle memory but it's still something I get wrong on occasion. I can definitely see <space> being better than colon (it gets rid of shift!), although I still have beef with escape. I don't want to play the fighting game :).

What about canceling commits? Sometimes you want to quit without saving, and other times you want to exit with a failure status (which has little application elsewhere). A "commit" editor should be smart enough to decide which to do under a single action.

I acknowledge this isn't intended for those heavily invested in their CLI editor of choice.