I had the same problem. All my tables were editable and all used the same size jQuery block of code to work on the table. After doing it this way for a while I learned how to write jQuery plugins. Now I use a table plugin that I wrote which handles my pagination, table filters and editing all in one block of code for all the tables on my sites. Over time I have improved my plugin, and now I have written other plugins which do character counting, and nice slide in effects.
Now with one line of jQuery I can run my table plugin $('#petty_table').mrtable({ url:"ajax/petty/delete_petty_line.php", tableurl:"database/petty/tables/table.php", }});