What element I'm in?

What element I'm in?

Hey guys,

I'm making star-rating with jquery (I know there are ready-made plugins for this, but I need my own). I have no idea where to put information about stars values. Keeping it in 'title' tag:

<span title="1" class="vote ico_star_empty"></span>
<span title="2" class="vote ico_star_empty"></span>
<span title="3" class="vote ico_star_empty"></span>

is no good. I can see this numbers in title tip when my mouse is over a star - I don't like that. I want to be w3c - I can't really use other attribute. Is there any way to figure out stars value inside:

$('.someclass span.vote').mouseover(function(){
...
});

? Is there any nice jquery way to check if user points first, second, third etc. element in a row?