Textarea

Plain paragraphs: the text data type edited through textarea — the Long text family's base variant. Line breaks are content; markup is not.

What is stored

Plain text with line breaks, exactly as typed — no markup, nothing interpreted. The template decides how breaks render, which is why this variant is safe to print escaped.

Declaring one

A max_length validation caps the control and shows a live counter in the editor; the write boundary reports anything that arrives over the cap through another lane.

An example

<div class="prose"><%= cms.asset.content.bio %></div>

Escaped (<%= %>), with CSS handling the line breaks. Printing plain text unescaped is harmless, but the habit is not — the day the field becomes rich text, the escape is the only thing that was protecting you.

{ "content": { "bio": "Fifteen years of teaching…" } }

When not to use it

• One line — that is text; a textarea invites paragraphs you do not want.
• Formatting is the point — headings, links, emphasis inside the prose: that is rich text.
• Structured parts (a quote plus an attribution) — two fields, or a group; prose that secretly carries structure is structure the template cannot reach.