Robert2 - thank you for your help. Interestingly, your strings resulted in exactly the same as my first version, e.g.: "Exampl1.e An apple". Because I expect you know what you're talking about, I figured that something fundamental must be wrong at my end. And I've figured out the culprit - it's track changes. Both your version and mine work fine when track changes is OFF. Track changes causes this problem whether or not deletions are shown or hidden. I can't figure out why track changes would cause this problem, but it's solved, so thank you for taking the time to help.

-Paul