I came across an interesting distinction between “writing” and “word processing”.
Writing is getting the words right. Word processing is… processing. It’s taking what you’ve written and doing stuff with it. Either bolding this or italicizing that or centering the headline or inserting a table or tweaking the margins or changing the font and sizes or adding color or… That’s word processing or page layout. … The keyboard and the return key is all you need. That’s writing. Once you’ve got the words right you can take that text and process it in a word processor or page layout program later. … When you’re about to write that’s all you should be ready to do: write. Leave the rest for another day. There are words to get right.
I like this distinction between writing and processing.
What about emphasis? Sure, the italics, or whatever, that display that emphasis are “processed”, but the emphasis itself is written. How can I indicate emphasis — how can I write emphasis, when someone else has determined for me, in advance, that emphasis must “come later”. It doesn’t come later. Later, I might forget. Emphasis is not processed. It is written.
On a similar note, I wonder: what about links? Are they written, or are they processed?