Double spacing problem when cut and paste from Word to WordPress post

Please bear with me as I’m a blogging newbie and a techno semi-illiterate.

I like prepare my posts offline and sometimes must do it out of necessity when I don’t have internet access, such as on a plane. But when I cut and paste from Word to a new draft post at my Dashboard, I consistently get double spacing that wasn’t originally there.

I understand from recently reading previous questions and answers in this forum that this is a consistent problem with Word. But if I use an alternative to Word, such as Notepad, I can’t plug hyperlinks into my draft post.

I know that there is a bit of a clumsy workaround, in terms of deleting spaces between paragraphs once my draft is in WordPress. But in addition to being time-consuming, this does not solve the problem of the extra spacing between sentences that I do not want to constitute separate paragraphs (such as if I’m quoting song lyrics).

Is there any way of getting the best of both worlds – that is, preparing my posts offline but avoiding the problem of double spacing (if I use Word) or not being able to insert hyperlinks (if I use Notepad)?

Thanks for any advice.