Text area

Use the text area component when you need to let users enter an amount of text that's longer than a single line. It’s useful when you want to let users describe something in their own words, such as describing the USP of their products, or submitting an enquiry. 

If there’s a word limit, make sure you tell users up front.

When not to use a text area

When deciding whether or not to use a text area field, here are a few things to consider:

• Open ended questions can be difficult for users to answer. They may not know what type of information we’re looking for, or how detailed. 
• The information entered into a text area is difficult to reuse later as data. If a user enters all their costs and milestones into one big text area, it's difficult to extract this data to use for reporting or planning purposes

Where possible, try breaking up an open-ended question into a series of simpler closed questions. The open-ended field, ‘Tell us about your project’, could be broken down into ‘When will your project start?’, ‘How much do you expect this project to cost?’ and ‘What will be the outcomes of the project?’. Try using radios and checkboxes where you can.

Do not use the text area component if you're asking for a single line of text, such as a phone number or name. In this case, you should use the text input component.