trouble trying to create a simple function for wordpress

[zerojosh]

???

 

I've been banging my head all night about this... I'm very new to php so please be gentle... (the file names below refer to common wordpress "theme" files, fyi):

 

 

I'm trying to write a function that I can call on various pages to simply auto-generate a hyperlink (essentially for stumbleupon and such). (I've looked at the plug-ins and decided they don't really fit what I'd eventually like to do). Here is the function, located in functions.php:

 

 

function joshtags($perm,$title){
echo '<a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url='.$perm.'&title='.$title.'"><img src="icon_su.gif" />Stumble it!</a>';
}  

 

and here is the function being called in single.php:

<?php joshtags(the_permalink(),the_title()); ?>

 

as you can see, it out puts the data but in the wrong order and only partially hyperlinked (with only a partial URL), the output is just below the title of the post at this address: http://www.quantummirage.com/blog/?p=26