Have you tried to write any non trivial document with MS Word? It is infuriating. Even the simplest tasks don't work reliably, like placing a picture with a caption. And oh my god if you try to Google for your problem you end up on outdated MS doc pages or what the pages describe only works in the desktop app and not the online version.
And since you brought up Word, I'll add that it has never in 30 years done numbering right, whether sections (like legal numbering: 1, 1.1, 1.1.1 etc.) or lists. In fact I think it's worse than it used to be; I was tearing my hair out recently trying to get it to number lists, which is such a simple thing.
There aren't many academic articles written in markdown. Most major conferences only accept word or PDF files, so it's a reasonable assumption to make.
