Using the WordPress selected() function

I’m using the WordPress selected() function to display the current option in a dropdown list. The issue I am having is that for some reason WordPress is printing out selected='selected' above the form in addition to in the actual <option> elements. This is how I am using the selected() function.

<select name="gender">
<option value="male" " . selected( $values['gender'] , 'male') . ">Male</option>
<option value="female" " . selected( $values['gender'] , 'female') . ">Female</option>
<option value="other" " . selected( $values['gender'] , 'other') . ">Other</option>         
</select>

Removing the markup above eliminates the selected='selected'which is appearing completely outside of the <form> element.

The selected function causes immediate output, it does not return a string. Therefore you can’t use it like that, in a string building mode.

If you want it to return a string instead of immediately outputting the text, pass false to the $echo parameter.

$string = "
<select name="gender">
<option value="male" " . selected( $values['gender'] , 'male', false) . ">Male</option>
<option value="female" " . selected( $values['gender'] , 'female', false) . ">Female</option>
<option value="other" " . selected( $values['gender'] , 'other', false) . ">Other</option>         
</select>
";