Formatting date field

I’m currently using a datefield compinent to assess a window for customers to have work done. Problem is, automatic e-mails generated by my ASP server page look a little bit shoddy when they are received because of the long format of the selectdate variable return:-

[font=Tahoma]Mon Feb 7 00:00:00 GMT+0000 2005[/font]

Is there an easy way to perform this formatting or would i need to use a string function to substring the field?

P.S. could someone explain how the hell [color=red]substring[/color] and [color=red]substr[/color] are actually used, cos I’m using:-

 my_var_to=my_to.substring(1,10); 

and it keeps on returning undefined.