Get HTML string and assign to text node
<html> <head> <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-1.3.2.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function(){ $("p").click(function () { var htmlStr = $(this).html()+"asdf"; $(this).text(htmlStr); }); }); </script> </head> <body> <body> <p>asdf</p> </body> </html>