PHP MySQL Data Display Question

I want to display just the first three letters of every word in one
field from a table, and I also want the first letters changed to lower
case. I believe either of the following two codes will do the trick, but
I can't figure out how to plug them into my query:

1) function makeshortcode($name) {
return strtolower(substr($name, 0, 3)) . substr(microtime(), 3, 7);
}

2) $first_three_letters = strtolower(substr("$string", 1));

Below is a copy of my query. Can anyone show where to insert either of
the above scripts or suggest an alternate method of printing out the
first three letters only, all lower case?

Thanks.

<?php
$result = mysql_query('select count(*) from fammammals');
if (($result) && (mysql_result ($result , 0) > 0)) {
} else {
die('Invalid query: ' . mysql_error());
}
{
$res = mysql_query ("SELECT * FROM fammammals") or die (mysql_error());
echo "<table class='sortable' id='tabedit'>";
//<!-- BeginDynamicTable -->
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array ($res))
{
echo '<tr><td class="text"><'. $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] .'?id='.
$row['IDMam'] .'>'. $row['FamMamName'] .'</td></tr>'."\n"; }

/*
echo '<tr><td class="text"><'. $_SERVER['PHP_SELF'] .'?id='.
$row['IDArea'] .'>'. $row['NamePA'] .'</td><td class="right">'.
$row['LinkPA'] .'</td></tr>'."\n"; }
*/

}
echo '</table>';
?>

.oO(David B)

I want to display just the first three letters of every word in one
field from a table, and I also want the first letters changed to lower
case. I believe either of the following two codes will do the trick, but
I can't figure out how to plug them into my query:

Do you want to do these modifications when fetching the data (i.e. in
your SQL-query) or after fetching it (i.e. in the PHP-code)?

1) SQL: SELECT ... LOWER(LEFT(yourField, 3)) AS yourField, ...
2) PHP: $value = strtolower(substr($value, 0, 3));

HTH
Micha