Components

Textarea

Open this example in a new tab: textarea

When to use this component

Use the textarea component when you need to let users enter an amount of text that’s longer than a single line.

When not to use this component

Users can find open-ended questions difficult to answer. It might be better to break up one complex question into a series of simple ones, for example where users can select from options using a Radios component.

If you need to ask an open question

Do not use the textarea component if you need to let users enter shorter answers no longer than a single line, such as a phone number or name. In this case, you should use the Text input component.

How it works

You must label textareas. Placeholder text is not a suitable substitute for a label, as it disappears when users click inside the textarea.

Labels must be aligned above the textarea they refer to. They should be short, direct and written in sentence case. Do not use colons at the end of labels.

There are 2 ways to use the textarea component. You can use HTML or, if you’re using Nunjucks or the GOV.UK Prototype Kit, you can use the Nunjucks macro.

Open this example in a new tab: textarea second

Use appropriately-sized textareas

Make the height of a textarea proportional to the amount of text you expect users to enter. You can set the height of a textarea by specifying the rows attribute.

Open this example in a new tab: textarea appropriately-sized with rows – textarea

Do not disable copy and paste

Users will often need to copy and paste information into a textarea, so do not stop them from doing this.

If you’re asking more than one question on the page

If you’re asking more than one question on the page, do not set the contents of the <label> as the page heading. Read more about asking multiple questions on Question pages.

Open this example in a new tab: textarea without a heading – textarea

Limiting the number of characters

If there’s a good reason to limit the number of characters users can enter, you can use the Character count component.

Error messages

Error messages should be styled like this:

Open this example in a new tab: textarea with error – textarea

Make sure errors follow the guidance in the Error message component and have specific error messages for specific error states.

If the input is empty

Say ‘Enter [whatever it is]’.

For example, ‘Enter summary’.

If the input is too long

Say ‘[whatever it is] must be [number] characters or less’.

For example, ‘Summary must be 400 characters or less’.

If the input is too short

Say ‘[whatever it is] must be [number] characters or more’.

For example, ‘Summary must be 10 characters or more’.

If the input is too long or too short

Say ‘[whatever it is] must be between [number] and [number] characters’.

For example, ‘Summary must be between 10 and 400 characters’.

If the input uses characters that are not allowed and you know what the characters are

Say ‘[whatever it is] must not include [characters]’.

For example, ‘Summary must not include è and £’.

If the input uses characters that are not allowed and you do not know what the characters are

Say ‘[whatever it is] must only include [list of allowed characters]’.

For example, ‘Summary must only include letters a to z, hyphens, spaces and apostrophes.

Help improve this component

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