reducing field echo

[BEFOR]

I am storing all states into table (drop menu) field like:

OH, US (Ohio)
FL, US ( Florida) , etc.,

When echoed onto a page, instead of displaying 'OH, US'.

--How can I display only the first half 'OH'

I haven't had a chance to dip into arrays yet, where I would call it back as 'Ohio' . (recommendations on tutorials gladly accepted!)

For right now, I'd like to display the first half.

Echo for this is: <?php echo $row_njoins['JContState']; ?>

[LordShryku]

States are all two letter abbreviations, so you could just use [man]substr[/man] and be okay.

[BEFOR]

Only question now is how to actually integrate with the echo.

$rest = substr("abcdef", 0, 1);

<?php echo $row_njoins['JContState']; ?>

I've tried it many different ways.

[LordShryku]

<?php echo substr($row_njoins['JContState'], 0, 2); ?>