<p>On a site of mine in which a textarea is used for submission, I have code that can appear something along the lines of the following:</p>

<pre><code>&lt;textarea&gt;&lt;p&gt;text&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/textarea&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>When validating (XHTML 1.0 Transitional), this error arises,</p>

<pre><code>line 88 column 50 - Error: document type does not allow element "p" here
</code></pre>

<p>If this is not a valid method, then what is expected?  I could do a workaround with an onload JavaScript event, but that seems needless.  Regardless this doesn't affect the output, but I'd rather my site validate.</p>

is there a reason you're trying to put a
```
<p>
```
within
```
<textarea>
```
? as you found out it's not valid. if it's for display purposes (ie, showing code) it should be translated:
```
```
<textarea>&lt;p&gt;text&lt;/p&gt;</textarea>
```
```
beyond validation issues, allowing arbitrary tags (which are not properly encoded as above) to display can be a huge security issue. it's paramount to make sure any user supplied input has been properly sanitized before it is displayed.