Get a td's title attribute.

Get a td's title attribute.

Hi,
 
I have a table that has many cells. Each cell has different title attribute. My original code was to get the text of a cell. How to modify it to get the cell's title attribute?
 
  1.   var showTooltip = function(event) {
  2.       var authorName = $(this).text();
  3.       $tooltip
  4.            .text('Highlight all articles by ' + authorName)
  5.            .show();
  6.       positionTooltip(event);
  7.  };

Thanks.