Why would you want to do that? You clearly don't understand html. Text areas automatically flow to fill the available width and that width typically depends on screen width. So if one is on a smart phone with a small width or a large screen with a wide width it will flow to that width. You can insert hard returns every n characters and get what you want, but it will look terrible in text areas narrower than that, over which you have no control. Forget paper! On the web you design by making the text areas the right width using css and html controls, not by diddling within the text area.