I've learned the hard way to "copy" things to the clipboard before I try to fire off a post (not just here). If you're really constructing a work of art, compose it in a word processor first. On the blog board, which has a completely different set of interfaces (#@#$$#), there is a "paste text only" which should import Word files and such without weird stuff coming along. The formatting is very stubborn on the blog board, and I usually have to edit and resave a post at least once to get formatting to stick.

On a related note, on the regular forums there's apparently some keystroke I can hit when I'm typing too fast that makes the whole post vanish while I'm composing it, and control-Z doesn't recover it. To make it worse, I'm not sure what key combo it is!