The HTML element
<textarea> text </textarea>provides a rectangular area in which the user can enter multi-line text. Here's an example
Here's the HTML
<form action="http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~jphb/encyc/expr1.cgi" method=get> <textarea name=text cols=24 rows=3> </textarea> <input type=submit> <input type=reset> </form>
The attributes cols and rows specify the size of the box.
Any "plain" text included between the <textarea> and </textarea> tags will appear as initial text in the box as shown here.
Unfortunately the user can edit out the initial text in the textarea box so it isn't an ideal input mechanism.