Without visual mode, you can use marks: “m” sets a mark, the next character selects the register to store the mark in (“a” works fine if you aren’t already intentionally using it), go to the other end of the selection, then “!” (pipe) “‘” (reference mark) “a” (select register) “fmt -1 | sort | fmt”

Where “gw}” re-wraps to the end of the paragraph, re-wrapping to a mark with “gw’a”