Abbreviate date months?

Use the format characters found in the table at the following link:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.date.php

inside the wordpress function the_time().

A few examples:

the_time( 'd' ); will print: '01'
the_time( 'M' ); will print: 'Dec'

you can also use them together:

the_time('F j, Y'); will print: July 17, 2007