Why Does HTML.TextArea require an @ before it?

Question

The below doesn't seem to work unless @ is before the @Html. Why is that?

@{
 if (DescriptionIsFieldReadOnly) {
                            Html.TextArea("description-edit", Model.Requisition.ReqHdr.Description, new { @Readonly = "readonly" });
                        }
                        else {
                            Html.TextArea("description-edit", Model.Requisition.ReqHdr.Description);
                        } 
}

Answer 1

Html.TextArea(...) returns an IHtmlString with the HTML code you want.

If you call it as a normal function, you don't actually do anything with that return value, so nothing happens.

Using @ turns it into a Razor expression that prints its value to the page.

Incidentally, that isn't a statement, so it should not have a semicolon.