I read those stories as well, but did not want to clutter up such an important thread with advice on what to do. Thanks, Bill, for bringing it up here. I know I'm only repeating what's already been said, but here is my version to help emphasize the point.

If I have ANYTHING to say that is more than a paragraph or two, then I go to Word and type what I want to say there, saving periodically. When I am done, I copy and paste my message into Mudcat or one of the other sites that I frequent. If by some chance Mudcat is acting up or I manage to hit the wrong buttons, then the post is not lost, I just go back and try again. If the post takes, then fine, I just delete the Word file and my words of wisdom are saved forever, thanks to Max and Mudcat.

Right now I am reaching the point at which I would do that very thing, but since I am about done and what I am saying isn't all that deathless anyhow, I'll just finish by mentioning that if you are saying something that you consider important and you would have difficulty reconstructing it if you were to lose it, then make sure you have a safety net, whether it be Word, Works, Notepad, Wordpad, whatever. It doesn't take that much longer.

Oh, and if I need to add any html, that goes into my Word document as well. After pasting the message into Mudcat, I check my html by clicking on the Preview button. If there are ANY errors in html, I fix them and Preview the message again. No exceptions to that rule. I don't just assume that I put the correct html in the correct place.