As the saying goes, good luck with that. Indeed with strict discipline you can use semantic styles in Word and other tools. People typically don't and the defa

As the saying goes, good luck with that. Indeed with strict discipline you can use semantic styles in Word and other tools. People typically don't and the default behavior in many cases is annoying or leads to problems (copying style, when you intend to copy just the text and so on). And, fiddling with these things takes a lot of time. As for software versions, moving operating systems, computer crashes and the like -- things happen when you are working on a dissertation and any other long term project, and you end up trying to rescue your files. Moreover, when you are a scholar, you often find yourself needing stuff you prepared decades earlier. In many cases the versions are not even easily available, if at all (Word 2.0, anyone?) There are tons of sites by academics detailing these scenarios with more details. I submitted a few links to HN a few minutes ago.