Question

I have made a fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/hAzJq/

How can i select the text inside the div but not inside the span?

alert($("div").not('span').text());​

Answer 1

Use .contents first, which will extract both text nodes and HTML nodes, and apply a :not selector to filter out the span:

alert($("div").contents(':not(span)').text())​​​​​​​​​​​​;

That said, an easier way might be to apply a different span with a special class around just the content you do want, and select that.