Question

I have a span that contains text that I would like to use. But within this span there is a h2 that I want to ignore. (This isnt my mark up and I cant change this so moving the h2 outside of the span is not an option)

Here is the mark up:

<span>
<h2>Joe Bloggs</h2>
Executive Director
</span>

Here is my current code which is getting the contents of the span including the h2

currentLi = $('ul#example2 li.frame3');

position = $(currentLi).find('span').text();

So my hopeful outcome will be the variable position containing the text “Executive Director”

Answer 1

How about using filter with .contents. Inside the filter function you can evaluate the nodeType property, ensuring that it is 3 (text nodes only):

var onlySpan = $("span").contents().filter(function () {
    return this.nodeType === 3;
}).text().trim();

Example: http://jsfiddle.net/Wp4FR/