I do a lot of work off-site, as do some contributors to my website, and there appears to be a problem with the copy-paste functionality.

When I work off-site, I'll partly work in code (such as enclosing titles in <em> tags and so forth), but the first line of information I write is typically not an html tag, but a text. When I attempt to copy this into CoffeeCup to process and editing further, any text preceding an html tag is deleted and doesn't carry over in the paste.

EXAMPLE:
I'm writing this piece and I have a title <em>in italics</em>, what a wonderful way to work away from home.

If I were to copy all of the above into CoffeeCup editor, it would copy only:

<em>in italics</em>, what a wonderful way to work away from home.

That means the entire first part, "I'm writing this piece and I have a title" is missing.

I am not sure if this is a general bug, a "feature," or if there's an option/preference to disable this type of program-selective editing, but I need to find some way to fix it without having to remember to start everything with a useless tag that I then have to delete.

I tried to copy the same line from your post and had the same result as you are describing. I'm able to edit posts, so I clicked on Edit to see your post in 'raw' (I didn't edit anything!). I copied the raw text and pasted it into the CC Editor and got the whole lot.
Then I copied your example text into MSWord and got it all. But copying from Word into the Editor left me with just the bit after the first html tag.
So I pasted your example into Notepad, copied from there to the Editor and got it all.

So it comes down to what programme you are using to write your text in. MSWord and also the forum posts that everyone can see, contain formatted text, whereas Notepad does not. If you are using Word, then copy it first to Notepad and from there into the Editor.

I've seen this issue and had it on my old laptop and it came back on my current laptop after installing one of my CC programs. I have never been able to figure out why the html editor does this. I discovered it when I was copying some js and it will always stop at the < in the code. Here I thought it was me.LOL You could open a support topic as I can replicate.

I don't doubt you're correct, but that's not behavior that should be replicated. I've had it happen when copying out of an editing box from within Wordpress as well (I use Text-based editing in Wordpress, not Visual).

So, the question is still whether this is intended or a bug. Do I have to be a subscribed Coffee Cup user to submit a support ticket or will they review my support ticket even as a free user?

I use Pure Text to paste as plain text http://stevemiller.net/puretext/