How to get the text node of an element?

You can get the nodeValue of the first childNode using

$('.title')[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue

http://jsfiddle.net/TU4FB/

var text = $(".title").contents().filter(function() {
  return this.nodeType == Node.TEXT_NODE;
}).text();

This gets the contents of the selected element, and applies a filter function to it. The filter function returns only text nodes (i.e. those nodes with nodeType == Node.TEXT_NODE).

Another native JS solution that can be useful for "complex" or deeply nested elements is to use NodeIterator. Put NodeFilter.SHOW_TEXT as the second argument ("whatToShow"), and iterate over just the text node children of the element.

var root = document.querySelector('p'),
    iter = document.createNodeIterator(root, NodeFilter.SHOW_TEXT),
    textnode;

// print all text nodes
while (textnode = iter.nextNode()) {
  console.log(textnode.textContent)
}

<p>
<br>some text<br>123
</p>

You can also use TreeWalker. The difference between the two is that NodeIterator is a simple linear iterator, while TreeWalker allows you to navigate via siblings and ancestors as well.