On page 167 of Practical Vim, 2nd edition print version, there’s an example macro shown for the “Play Back with a Count” section. The third step is missing the sideways square brackets used to indicate space characters.

The step looks like this:

s + <ESC>

but it should look like this (substitute the sideways square bracket character for x):

sx+x<ESC>

This is readily apparent when you reference–as the text in the section does–Tip 3, “Take One Step Back”. The spaces are clearly shown in the text for the equivalent step.