C :: Printing A String On A Char Matrix

So I have an array of char called s.This array has many words inside, each one separated by ''.The words are sorted by length (from bigger to smaller).I have have a char matrix with random things inside (it was not initialized) caled mat.I want to copy the first word from the array s to the matrix mat.

Code:

int nlin, ncol; /*number of lines and collumns.*/
int c,l,a,q;
char mat [1000][1000];
char s[1000];
}

[code]....

I can't see where this is wrong, but, when i test it, it clearly is not right. for example, if the input is 3 lines and 3 columns for the matrix and the word is crate, the output is :

cra
t
e

but it should be:

cra
t
e