Composing in another program is a good way, but there can be formatting issues...especially when using something like Notepad. For smaller entries that don't take a lot of time I highlight all the text, and copy it, before hitting submit just in case something hiccups...if it hiccups I just have to paste and try again. If you're using the right click to do it, one needs to avoid "delete" like the plague though, or it would all be for naught(though usually you can go to Edit -> Undo and fix even that blunder). I have a sneaking suspicion that Leanan doesn't need the spellchecker in Word...the whiz-bang new FireFox contains an integrated spellchecker which checks the text in boxes like these.

As weird as it sounds, I think the blog format creates a sense of community. Because we're all squished into this one page in a series of threads we have to get along or it'd just be complete garbage. In forums where you can spawn other sections, certain sections tend to get cliquey and so you start avoiding them and other bizzare things which start to create what are essentially multiple different sites.

Not that it's brilliant, but the way I deal with this is to open a 'new window' when I want to comment, as I did just now. After posting, I just close that window and return to the page which still has the "new" flags attached.