Not to pick on Sweetpea, but let's try something.
In the attached test.zip are html files of Sweetpea's post conjured by copying and pasting into Word, and the resultant mobi files.
I saved them as [Full Web Page], and [Web Page, Filtered] out of Word. Sure enough, the html file for [Full Web Page] is twice as big as the [Web Page, Filtered] file.
Funny thing: When I try to open the files in a browser, in the [Full Web Page] file I can't see the picture. Same thing in the mobi files - that's why the mobi file for [Full Web Page] is smaller.
But, when I look at the html code in the filtered file, it's not too bad - the styles names are longer than [h1] etc., and since the styles straight off the web site are being expressed as modifications of existant styles on the fly, sure we could trim out some file size by defining the styles better. How much time do I have to do that? (zilch)
But give up Word because we hate evil so bad? Not a chance.....in Notepad (or vi, or textpad, ted, whatever) I get to miss out on Selecting by Style, search and replace on invisible characters like hard vs soft carriage returns (do I remember the code? is this western or unicode?), grammar check, spell check, multi-columns, tables, picture embedding by drag & drop, MACROS, automated TOCs, just to scratch the surface.
To make a toc in Notepad, I get to hand code it.
To make a table in Notepad, I get to hand code it.
To embed a picture in Notepad, I get to hand code it.
To change all instances of a style in Notepad, I get to search and replace.
I get to be the spellchecker/grammar check (semi colon rules, anyone?)
I can go on all day. I'd rather have the machine assist me through my own ineptitudes than say "oh, i don't need any help here" and do it the hard way.....being all lazy and all as I am......
-bjc