text is similar to html(), but escapes HTML (replace "<" and ">" with their HTML entities). : text « jQuery « JavaScript Tutorial

<html>
  <head>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-1.3.2.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript">
        $(document).ready(function(){

            $("p").text("<b>Some</b> new text.");
        });
    </script>
    <style>
      .selected { color:red; }
      .highlight { background:yellow; }
    </style>    
  </head>
  <body>
    <body>
      <p class="selected highlight">Hello first</p>
      <p class="">Hello</p>
    </body>
</html>

30.104.text
	30.104.1.	Assign text value to DIV
	30.104.2.	Change text to uppercase
	30.104.3.	Replace Span Text Value
	30.104.4.	Output HTML as text
	30.104.5.	Get text from tag
	30.104.6.	Set text for tag
	30.104.7.	text() returns a string that contains the combined text contents of all matched elements
	30.104.8.	text is similar to html(), but escapes HTML (replace "<" and ">" with their HTML entities).
	30.104.9.	Get HTML and Text from a p tag
	30.104.10.	Set text and html