WordPerfect's "Reveal Codes" mode was the best feature a word processor ever had. You could see exactly what was causing your formatting problems, and surgically fix them. It's like viewing the HTML of a web page.
I don't have a copy of Word handy, but I don't think it is nearly as detailed. Wordperfect would show you all the formatting, but also marks for tables of contents and indexes, columns, images and other inserts, etc.