I apologize that my question was so unclear...my inexperience with php is really causing me some trouble...I even tried to go through the explanation again and couldn't make it come out any clearer [img src=\"style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/huh.gif\" style=\"vertical-align:middle\" emoid=\":huh:\" border=\"0\" alt=\"huh.gif\" /] but this is what I finally came up with which is what I was looking for [code]echo "<div class=\"boardmembername\">" . $row['BoardMemberName'] . "</div>" . "<div class=\"boardmemberterm\">" . $row['BoardMemberTerm'] . "</div>" . "<div class=\"boardmemberelection\">" . $row['BoardMemberElection'] . "</div>"; [/code] I was not grasping the fact that the "." is a string concantenator (sp?) all that I was trying to achieve can been seen here with the [a href=\"http://test.suncoastusbcba.org/board.php\" target=\"_blank\"]"Directors"[/a] section