> go to another program such as Word, do your work there, then copy it to WS; a procedure to me monstrously cumbersome

Why so? I commonly have between 6 and 9 programs running perhaps a total of 15 active windows, and flipping between programs is no trouble at all.

It gives protection against not just timeout failures but all the many other gremlins that can affect your intention to post into a vast database like this one over the vagaries of web connections. And above all, it enables you to easily handle all the edit functions and other text handling tasks including sequential saves in a program designed to do just that. I don't normally bother with a post of this length though.