the story editor has been created a long time ago, when editing in the frame was too slow.
nowadays, the story editor should only be used in those case when editing in the frame is not comfortable... and you should avoid doing the formatting in there.
personally, i use it once every two years...
and, yes, we need a new story editor that does even less formatting (but, probably, shows the formatting in a sort of markup). some sort of power tool, for those who don't need to see the formatting.
for your case, just ignore the story editor and do your editing in the frame.