A WYSIWYG editor lets you edit HTML while watching the result live โ here's when that's the faster path, and when it isn't.
When WYSIWYG editing is faster
For simple content centered on text and image placement โ an email newsletter, a blog post body โ clicking buttons for bold, italics, or alignment and seeing the result immediately is faster than typing tags by hand.
When hand-written code works out better
For precise layout work (grid, flexbox), reusable component structure, or a CSS framework that needs specific class names (like Tailwind), the code a WYSIWYG editor auto-generates can be inefficient or structured wrong โ writing it by hand wins here.
A hybrid approach โ draft visually, then clean up the code
A common workflow in practice is drafting quickly in a WYSIWYG editor, then switching to source view to strip unnecessary inline styles or swap in semantic tags like <article> and <section>.