Shortcodes and template tags – best practice?

Hi,

Been trying to figure this out for a while, but never bothered to go to the forums till now. What’s the deal with using template tags in shortcodes? I noticed that ‘get_’ needs to be in front of some of these functions / template tags in order for them to work.

i.e. get_the_author() works, but the_author() just prints out the author’s name before I can return the variable for use as a shortcode.

Can someone explain how this works please? Can’t find anything in the Codex.

Thanks,

mn

PS, thought it might be useful to show what I’m trying to do as well:

/* News from Blog category only (category '3') */
function osu_latestblogposts() {
	$start = '<div class="widget widget_osu_blog">';
	$start .= '<a title="Subscribe to our RSS feed" href="/feed?cat=3" class="rss"><img alt="RSS" src="' . get_bloginfo('template_directory') . '/images/ico-rss-big.png"></a>';
	$start .= '<div>';

	$my_query = new WP_Query('category=3&showposts=3');
	while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post();
		$inner = '<div class="item"><a href="' . get_permalink() . '" title="';
		$inner .= printf( esc_attr__( 'Permalink to %s', 'inspire' ), the_title_attribute( 'echo=0' ) );
		$inner .= '" rel="bookmark" class="title">' . the_title() . '</a>';
		$inner .= '<p class="post-meta">';
		$inner .= '<span class="small">by</span> <span class="post-author"><a title="Posts by ';
		$inner .= the_author();
		$inner .= '" href="' . the_author_posts_link() . '">' . the_author() . '</a></span>';
		$inner .= '<span class="small">on</span> <span class="post-date">';
		$inner .= get_the_date('d/m/Y') . '</span></p>';
		$inner .= the_excerpt() . '</div> <!-- End div.item -->';
	endwhile;

	$end = '</div>';
	$end .= '</div> <!-- End div.widget_osu_blog -->';

	$latestblogposts = $start . $inner . $end;
	return $latestblogposts;
}