<textarea> work on page

Hi,

I have following issue:
I’m writing page with PHP and using PHP-exec.

The page is feed-back form, so
– have name field,
– email field
– multiple lines text area.

In my script I have check and if user didn’t enter name or email, it return the form and give error.
In this case I return text area with the already typed in text:

<textarea rows=’10’ cols=’40’ name=’content’ id=’content’><?php echo $_POST[‘content’]; ?></textarea>

BUT: if user typed several lines, it adds <p> or BR tags in the text area. Not user friendly at all.
I tried to insert same text area in other places of the page (in header, in footer etc..) and there everything was fine – no tags we added. So looks like the problem on my page only.

How this can be resolved?

Thanks!