ADD new line in VI

After much searching and even reading bits of the manual... I give up... I want to do this: :%s/pattern/\npattern/g Where \n will start a new line... I'd really thought this would work but I get ^@ instead... any ideas how to do this properly? ANSWER: I found a work around.. (possibly the correct way... but I doubt it) when building the string in Gvim - hit ctrl+v then tap return (enter) [sometimes it's ctrl+v and tap m: ctrl+v+m] this pastes in a ^M which is actually a newline character. Worked for me. :%s/\\n/(@ctrl+v+enter@)/g