It seems that word wrapping no longer works for textarea elements in IE 11. In IE 10 and earlier, FF, Safari, and Chrome word wrapping works as expected.
IE 11 is no
In order to ensure that the answer is obvious to people visiting this question in the future: the OP (wesley) answered the question himself in the comments beneath the question:
The cause of the problem is that Internet Explorer 11 makes textarea
elements inherit whatever white-space
property is applied to the direct parent.
The resolution is to apply white-space: pre-wrap
to the textarea, as identified by Jean-François Beauchamp.