jQuery Forum

before resorting to parsing ID's it's generally easier to use traversing or property related methods and makes for far more readable code

I'm assuming that there is a 1:1 relationship between commentary and toggler, in which case indexing is ideal


$('span.toggler').click(function(){
    // get index to use for corresponding "commentary"
   var idx=$('span.toggler').index(this);
   $(this).fadeToggle();
   $('.commentary').eq(index).slideToggle();
});



$('.closer').click(function(){
  $(this).parent().slideToggle();
  // is span only one hidden???
   $('span.toggler:hidden').fadeToggle();
  });

If they share a common parent wrapper that doesn't contain other toggler or commentary - a mini tempalte,  such as :
<div class="module">
      <div class="initial_view">.....text & images <span class="toggler">Read more</span></div>
      <div class="commentary">   ...lots of text<span class="closer">Go back</span></div>
</div>

then traversing methods are fairly easy to implement

$('.closer').click(function(){
      $(this).parent().prev().find('.toggler').show()
})

Not sure what your html looks like and I know that passing ID's in selector's is path of least resistance when learning but as you'll find ... these methods are human readable and chainable

You're missing the '#' in the span.toggler ID:

1.     var _id = commentary.attr("id");   
2.     var commentButton = String('#' + _id.substr(0, _id.length-1) + "a");

Thanks for both of those responses.  I was missing the #, and the .eq() is great.  I'm excited to learn more of jquery.  :-)