Preserve line breaks in textarea

Simon M. picture Simon M. · Jun 2, 2015 · Viewed 72.2k times · Source

I have a form with a textarea and I want to preserve line breaks entered by the user when outputting the content.

For exemple, if I write in textarea :

Here is a sentence. Here is another. here is one more.

This is a new paragraph. Here is a new sentence. Here is another.

I want the same output and not :

Here is a sentence. Here is another. here is one more. This is a new paragraph. Here is a new sentence. Here is another.

How could I preserve line breaks?

Answer

Vaidotas Pocius picture Vaidotas Pocius · Jun 2, 2015

Generally you just need to add

  • white-space: pre-line; whitespace trimmed to single whitespace or

  • white-space: pre-wrap; all whitespace preserved

to the element's style (CSS), where you want your text rendered with line-breaks.