To a novice it appears not to work if you've hit Ctrl+S in your terminal to suspend output, for example. Ctrl+Q to release your terminal, Ctrl+C to return control to Vi if something else has it, Esc to get into normal mode if you're not already there.
Thanks for clarifying. I understand this is a bit different, but if folks are using vim, the best resource (in my opinion) for novices is vimtutor. Just type "vimtutor" in the console. It uses an interactive tutorial to explain the basics of editing, saving, moving around — plus the various modes.
