vim/Q/Can I visually select a block of text and quickly surround it with quotes, backticks, etc?

• Can I visually select a block of text and quickly surround it with quotes, backticks, etc?

  • AI Answer

    • AI/Response
      • Short answer: Yes — with the vim-surround (or nvim-surround) plugin, visually select text and press S followed by the delimiter character. Without a plugin it is awkward; a plugin is the standard approach.

      • With vim-surround / nvim-surround

        • Install tpope/vim-surround (Vim / Neovim) or kylechui/nvim-surround (Neovim-native Lua port).
        • Visual-mode surround workflow:
          • 1. Enter visual mode: v (char), V (line), or Ctrl-v (block).
          • 2. Select the target text.
          • 3. Press S (capital S) then the delimiter:
            • S" → "text"
            • S' → 'text'
            • S` → `text`
            • S( or S) → ( text ) / (text) (opening adds spaces; closing does not)
            • S[ → [text], S{ → {text}, S< → <text>
            • St → prompts for an HTML/XML tag name, e.g. St then span → <span>text</span>
        • Normal-mode shortcuts (no visual selection needed):
          • ys<motion><char> — surround a motion. E.g. ysiw" surrounds the inner word with ".
          • yss" — surrounds the whole line.
          • cs<old><new> — change surrounding: cs"' turns "text" into 'text'.
          • ds" — delete surrounding " from "text" → text.
        • With nvim-surround the keymap defaults are identical; it also supports Treesitter-aware selections.

      • Without a plugin (vanilla Vim)

        • Visual select, then c to change the selection, then manually type the surrounding characters. Fast for one-off edits but there is no dedicated motion for it.
        • Ex substitute on a visual range: :'<,'>s/\%V\(.*\)\%V./"\1"/ — possible but unwieldy.

      • mini.surround (alternative)

        • Part of echasnovski/mini.nvim. Uses sa (surround add) by default: visual select + sa". Keybindings differ from vim-surround but the concept is identical.
      • vim-surround README
      • nvim-surround README
      • mini.surround docs