PHP + MySQL text output problem

programming
1

I’m developing this website to learn PHP and MySQL.
When outputting text from the database the paragraph somehow are not being show, unless I output in a textarea

code with text area showing proper paragraphs

<p class="text">Article:<br> 
<textarea name="thearticle" cols="170"  rows="20">
   <?php echo $row['thearticle']; ?>
</textarea></p>

code with

but outputs without paragraphs

<p>Article: </p>
<p><?php echo $row['thearticle'];?></p>

to see the output of but the above implimentations go to: http://matthewzammit.com/cms/viewArticle.php?id=15 where both are displayed on the same page under each other

how am I going to get rid of the textarea and output into a normal <p> tag? this textarea is annoying as it has a fixed size and if exceeded will create ugly scrollbars.

hope you can help!! thanks in advance.

Matt