Wrapping problems

Hi, I'm using PHP and MySQL to develop a knowledge base at work. I'm kind of new to PHP. I have a problem in that users are asked to enter in a full description to the knowledge base via a textarea on a form. This info is then stored in a field of type text. My problem is in displaying this text field. The text that will be entered will be formatted, e.g. 1. Step 1 2. Step 2 3. Step 3 However, when I display the description (in a table) - the text looses it's formatting giving 1. Step 1 2. Step 2 3. Step3. I've tried to use the <PRE> tag in the table generated by my PHP code but that results in the table growing as wide as the longest line of text instead of wrapping within the confines of the table. I've tried specifing a % width on my generated table but this doesn't work either. Any clues? Paul O' Connor.