Format textarea output from controller

Here’s the spin
on creation of an object in the create method of my controller I’m
pulling data from the object being submitted and sticking some of that
data into an other object that creates the task, the data goes in ok
and saves fine but when I render the data I can’t get it to use a line
break ? tried < br &gt, /\n, “
” (asp newline) ??? , concatieng
the text in a variable.
Any help or pointed in the right direction would great
I’ll say Dooooo now in the case that this is something really obvious

ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111)