What data type should I use if I have no idea how much data will be entered? And is there anyway of avoiding all the trailing white space if I enter, e.g. varchar(50).

Thanks in advance.

Normally a text field allowing for 255 characters is enough. Anything larger would be a comment field.
To avoid "trailing spaces" use the trim statement.

thanks for the speedy reply, can you just confirm that basically it's necessary to use the trim statement all the time to avoid the trailing space?

Thanks.

This depends on the data being entered. If a user types in "Whatever" then there won't be any trailing spaces no matter what you set the field length to.
If a user types in "Whatever " then those trailing spaces will be part of the data entry for that record and the trim statement should be used.

Hope this helps.

Thanks, I just mistakenly used char(50) instead of varchar(50) and noticed that blank character spacers (amounting to 50) were being inserted. All fixed now, thanks for the help.