determining the type of element selected in jquery

Question

I have a jQuery selection, is there a way to determine what type of element it is (e.g. <a>,<span>,etc...)?

Answer 1

You can use .is() with a selector to see it it matches, like this:

var is_span = $(this).is("span");

Or if you have a DOM element:

var is_span = this.tagName == "SPAN";

Answer 2

$("#elementId").get(0).tagName