Say the following is your cobol code:
000340 01 TREE-TYPE PIC X(15) VALUE 'BANANATREE'. 000350 01 FRUIT-TYPE PIC X(15) VALUE 'BANANA'. 000360 01 TREE-FRUIT PIC X(5). If you wanna move only particular value to another variable instead of as a whole value you can use reference modification.
For Eg :
You can say
004310 004320 MOVE TREE-TYPE(1:5) TO TREE-FRUIT. 004440
This will move "BANAN" to TREE-FRUIT. (The letters from position 1 of TREE-TYPE for 5 positions.So this : (colon) is called ref modification indicator.Like this you can use MOVE TREE-TYPE(2:4) TO TREE-FRUIT.So the character from 2nd position for 4 character length will get move.