OHHHHHHHHHHH pasting into lj's HTML editor. okay, that makes sense. i just tested it and it stripped my ms word-coded gibberish into plain text with no tags at all.

whereas if i paste the same thing into the rich text editor, i get the following before my content even shows up:

< meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="Content-Type" />< meta content="Word.Document" name="ProgId" />< meta content="Microsoft Word 11" name="Generator" />< meta content="Microsoft Word 11" name="Originator" />< link href="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\moonal\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtml1\01\clip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List" />< !--[if gte mso 9]>< xml>
< w:WordDocument>
< w:View>Normal
< w:Zoom>0
< w:PunctuationKerning />
< w:ValidateAgainstSchemas />
< w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false
< w:IgnoreMixedContent>false
< w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false
< w:Compatibility>
< w:BreakWrappedTables />
< w:SnapToGridInCell />
< w:WrapTextWithPunct />
< w:UseAsianBreakRules />
< w:DontGrowAutofit />
< /w:Compatibility>
< w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4
< /w:WordDocument>
< /xml>

< /style>
< style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}
< /style>