As a webmaster and writer I get drowned in e-mail and all kinds of text documents. Some emails I receive are HTML, some are plain text.
Some text comes from who knows where.
I cut and paste portions of text from articles, e-mails and between programs all the time. What you quickly see is that not all text is created is equal. This can cause a lot of problems when cutting and pasting, translating and working between documents and programs. Try using the smart quotes from MS Word in an HTML document and you quickly see the problem as soon as you post it on the web. Text must also be formatted for print or web publishing.