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Ask HN: Paste and keep source formatting, legitimate use cases?

1 points by jeffybefffy519 ↗ HN
I was just writing an email in Gmail and pasted an order number into the email which was copied from another website, the order number text was bold and massive which didnt match the rest of the text.

Can someone please explain a legitimate use case for the _default_ functionality on applications like Word, Excel, Gmail & numerous popular note taking apps to keep the source formatting? It seems to _always_ be more annoying than useful.

3 comments

[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 22.7 ms ] thread
slater
I agree. Also, most OSes have a way of dealing with that, e.g. on macOS: paste and match style - cmd-opt-shift-v instead of cmd-v
version_five
Moving stuff around within the application itself?
anyfoo
Even cross-application, formatting is also more subtle things like emphasis, quote levels, and bullet point lists. It's possible that in those cases you are quite happy about the default of it having been copied correctly and so don't really notice as much. I don't know what's more common for the average user.