Invalid procedure call or argument: left

I am using an ASP page running on IIS6 using VBScript as the programming language. I am trying to display the first part of body text from a freetext field as part of a news headline section on the home page. The code I have is:

if not isnull(objRSNews(“tblNewsTitle”)) or objRSNews(“tblNewsTitle”)<>“” then
response.Write “

” & objRSNews(“tblNewsTitle”) & “

”

strFirstParagraph = left(objRSNews(

“

tblNewsBody

”

), instr(objRSNews(

“

tblNewsBody

”

),Chr(13))-1)

response.Write

“

” & strFirstParagraph & “

”
end if
I am getting the error message in the title when trying to rn this. Can anyone give me an idea why?
I have set the client language to VBScript in IIS and given full permissions to the application.