7. The method of claim 1 , wherein each record in the series of records defines attributes for a contiguous group of characters having a common format.
1. A computer-implemented word processing presentation method, comprising: obtaining an unformatted data structure containing a series of characters representing content for a word processing document; accessing a series of first records in a data structure associated with the unformatted data structure file, wherein each first record contains data correlating a location of one or more characters in the unformatted data structure to a location for the one or more characters in the word processing document; generating a display of the word processing document by applying the correlating data from the series of records to the series of characters in the unformatted data structure; receiving a command to delete particular characters from the word processing document, wherein the particular characters are included in the unformatted data structure; and in response to receiving the command to delete characters, generating a record in the series of records that indicates that the particular characters are deleted from the word processing document while leaving the particular characters in the unformatted data structure unchanged.