It isn' t actually blank - it contains some HTML code, but you don't need to worry about that. You can forget tab settings - they don't work, and text formatting is done differently. Now you can play around a bit, give the world your telephone number and address, and make your message bigger or smaller. I'll put this warning up just the once. Word is pretty good at this stuff, but it does have to work quite hard at pretending to be a web browser, and translating what you are creating on the screen into html code and back again.
Pure text takes up very little space and downloads quickly.
It's also boring. Anything else takes up more space, and takes longer to download. It also makes your site more appealing. You don't have to understand the difference, because your browser does. Ok, so far we've got black text on a white background.