On Windows: Backspacing through beginning of line removes formatting from subsequent text

On windows, creating a QTextEdit Widget and changing it's text properties like fontFamily(), fontPointSize(), textColor, backgroundColor, styleSheet, etc in the constructor works until the user backspaces through the origin of the cursor (line 1, column 0) upon which all formatting typed from the cursor from then on is the default format. The behavior is unexpected and the font should stay the same unless the text properties are set by the app programmer to be backspace-able.