I have got a review page on my site, but when someone submits a review it just gets stored in the database as one great lump, what i want is to be able to allow simple formatting options like <br> or even better to have it so that when they press enter that is recognised as <br>, but i also want to keep the preg+replace i have for security reasons, any thoughts are as always greatly appreciated,

if im not explaining enough just let me know and i'll add more info when it's not so late

PHP I assume?

If I'm understanding what you're saying, why not just check for newline characters and replace with <br />'s on output.