losing data from a mysql database field

Hi, I'm having an odd occurrence using mysql. If I insert into a varchar field with information like "This is the information", it works fine and I can retreive and display the data using a normal 'print' or 'echo' statement. However, if I try to display the data in a form field (so that I can edit the data) I only get "This" (ie. I am losing everything after the first whitespace character). Is there anything that anyone could suggest that would solve this problem? Thanks. Geoffrey