 <p>You could get the textarea by</p> <pre><code>$('textarea') </code></pre> <p>If it's the only one on your page.</p> <p>You just need to call submit on the form that the textarea is contained within</p> <p><strong>EDIT:</strong></p> <p>After reading your update, you just want to validate that the textarea is not blank before submitting the form. You just need to set up the validation</p> <pre><code>var textArea = $('#results'); //Get the textarea if (textArea.val() == "") { textArea.show(); textArea.focus(); return false; } // perform the form submit here as textarea is not blank </code></pre> <p>Could you post the whole object where you have got the code beginning with</p> <pre><code> case "Save": </code></pre> <p>from? It would probably be a good idea to use that object to perform the submit.</p> <p><strong>EDIT 2:</strong></p> <p>In regard to your comment about the page being refreshed, submitting the form causes the page to be POSTed. It sounds like you want to POST data using AJAX. </p> <p>Take a look at jQuery's <a href="http://docs.jquery.com/Ajax/jQuery.ajax#options" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><code>$.ajax()</code></a> command</p>