You can have a default value disappear when a user clicks in the box. Look at any common search field that displays ‘search’ in teh text area. When you click into it you don’t ahve to remove the text, it just disappears.
The code below will do exactly what I’m looking to do with Contact Form 7, thoguh am not sure where to implement this in the template itself. Any help would be appreciated.
<input type="text" name="ea" id="ea" size="20" value="Enter E-mail Address" onfocus="if(this.value==this.defaultValue) this.value='';" onblur="if(this.value=='') this.value=this.defaultValue;" />