<TEXTAREA NAME="name of variable" ROWS="number of rows" COLS="number of columns">
Where TEXTAREA specifies the input is to be an area of text.
The NAME is the name of the variable. For example, NAME="description". The user would input a long character string such as a few sentences describing of an object. This long character string would be the value assigned to the name of the variable "description".
ROWS specifies the number of rows of characters in the text area, and COLS specifies the number of columns, or characters in each row, in the text area.
These are required attributes, as is the </TEXTAREA> tag. Note that this is different than text box which did not require an ending tag.