SO - 20069419

by Ken Z

HTML

<div class="letter">ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ</div>

JavaScript

$('.letter').replaceWith(function () {
    var text = $.trim($(this).text());
    return $.map(text.split(''), function (char) {
        return '<div class="letter" data-value="' + char + '">' + char + '</div>';
    }).join('');
})