Thank you very much. This is what I was trying to find and didn't know enough about the subject to have the right search terms. It appears that piece tables made all the difference for Word 1.0 and 1.1 when machines were not so powerful and quick. I don't want to spend a year trying to build something complicated because I'm not capable of it and building a text editor isn't the objective. But I hate to do something poorly regardless, even if know one really notices a delay. Anyway, pointing me to this as a start is very helpful. Thank you.