How to use surround in Visual-block mode

[Jagddish]

after selecting these 3 lines in visual-block mode, when I tried to use St it would only wrap around the letter
same result with S<

      before
  <li>*One</li>
  <li>*two</li>
  <li>*three</li>
  
       after
  <li><a>O</a>ne</li>
  <li><a>t</a>wo</li>
  <li><a>t</a>hree</li>

[kylechui]

Are you selecting the whole lines or just the characters? Try something like 0<C-v>_St (go to beginning of line, start visual block, go to end of line, surround).

EDIT: Just realized the words inside aren't uniform length; best way might be to just do one row and dot-repeat the rest, or record a macro.

[Jagddish]

Thank you