I have been at this all night and no matter what formula I type in I get "The Formula Contains Errors"

In Column 'E' I have a list of states spelled out, I would like to change that to the state abbreviations.

In column 'H' I have the states and in column 'I' the abbreviations.

I am trying to put my formula into column 'F'

I have tried several different formulas found on-line in various forums and I have also tried using a separate sheet.

No matter what formula I use I get the same error in both Excel 2013 and Excel 2003.

Can someone please talk me through this step by step as if I had no clue what I am doing, because after 3 hours of messing around with this, I apparently do not have a clue!