I just noticed backspace is working again. Thanks so much for this!

Thanks, Fred Rivett. I remember we talked about this a while back, and you taught me how to use backspace to prevent numbers from becoming a list (I kept using the Microsoft Word route: Command+z).

Every publisher I've worked with avoids automatically numbering lists, for different reasons. (Style guides commonly tell writers to disable automatic lists in Word.) My current use case involves multiple-choice questions for tests. I'm not actually writing a list when I type "3. " and start writing the third multiple-choice question on a test. Lex treats it as a list. Now that automatic lists gobble up my numbers, I have to implement a serious workaround to keep the numbering on the page.

A couple reasons why automatically numbered lists are a bad idea… First, it's unpredictable how they will end up when you copy and paste them to another document. (This also goes for my #1 pain point with Lex, which is the automatic spacing the Lex UI inflicts on documents—this produces so much weirdness downstream where I work, but I've managed to talk people through how to handle that weirdness.) Second, the indentation that an automatic list brings up is sticky and alters the editing process when writing something that is not a list (such as MC question number 45 on a test, for instance).

Having the possibility of treating these lists as regular text is important to me in many use cases with publishers. The way Lex does it is likely great for web publishing but is not helpful for other publishing routes (like generating LaTeX-laced PDF tests or straight-up textbooks).