NavList:

John,

No worries! You are typing HTML messages (not plain text). When you draft messages on the NavList website, the normal setup produces styled messages. That's why there are buttons for bold text, italic text, subscripts, superscripts, blockquoting, linking, the degree symbol, etc. Those are all (except the degree symbol actually) available only in HTML messages, not in plain text. 

Plain text messages are sometimes submitted by email. Of course, HTML-based email has been absolutely normal and mainstream for over a dozen years, but sometimes a plain text email is easier. We also have, as I said, some folks who just won't give up their email preferences formed in the late 1990s. There are plenty of people who believe that HTML-based formatting "ruined" email. I could force people to submit only formatted messages, but that would annoy a few long-established members. So we're stuck.

One way to spot plain text messages: look for "old-style" quoting from a prior message. If you see a greater than symbol, >, at the beginning of each line of quoted text, then you're probably looking at a plain text message (or someone has quoted back from an earlier plain text message).

A recommendation for all of you: please try to avoid copying and pasting into the website editor from MS Word and other text-editing software. The results can be a pain-in-the-neck for me and inevitably this process produces a huge amount of un-necessary Microsoft bloat even on very short messages. Instead, just pop on the website and edit directly in the online editor. 

Frank Reed