First word selector

Question

How can I select the first word in a div?

I need to be able to insert a line break after the first word, or wrap it in a span tag. I need to do this for multiple di

Answer 1

Actually, if you want to use it as a plugin, so that it would do it for all the items in the selector, not only the first one, use this one:

$.fn.wrapStart = function(numWords){
    return this.each(function(){
        $this = $(this);
        var node = $this.contents().filter(function(){
            return this.nodeType == 3
        }).first(),
        text = node.text(),
        first = text.split(" ", numWords).join(" ");
        if (!node.length) return;
        node[0].nodeValue = text.slice(first.length);
        node.before('' + first + '');
    });
};

http://jsfiddle.net/rxAMF/