[swannodette]

Styling your text has absolutely nothing to with writing. Consider that if you're writing with pen and paper you're not styling your text, you're just writing. A good writing tool should facilitate focusing on writing (no distractions) and augment the organization of your writing- that's about it.

Presentation is a whole other step that you get to when you've actually written something worth reading.

[delayclose]

I don't see how adding a predefined style called "level 2 heading" to paragraph would be more distracting than adding a "/this is a level 2 heading" TeX command.

That said, I think having a catalogue of suitable elements for each context and a (modifiable) document structure tree is better than either of the above alternatives.

[AndrewDucker]

I disagree. If I'm writing something for others to read then the presentation is an integral part of the process. Knowing how it's going to be laid out strongly affects what is written.