But I can’t use it because [option + arrow keys] or [option + delete] behaves differently
Have you looked at the “Menus & Shortcuts preference pane” to possibly change those to your preferences? I haven’t really used it myself, but it seems to give you access to setting a lot of the shortcuts.
BBEdit follows the macOS convention for those key commands on all of my installs: opt+arrow moves the cursor one word; opt+shift+arrow selects one word; opt+delete removes one word (nearest, to left of cursor). Menus & Shortcuts prefs are set to defaults. Perhaps your system Keyboard Shortcuts were somehow modified (Apple > Sys.Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts) specific to BBEdit? I have a few in App Shortcuts to prevent certain apps from being Quit without using the menu.
Zmacs (which ran on Lisp Machines) is my real favorite. Unfortunately, I no longer have a LispM. 
Thanks to @Will_B and @macguyver for trying to repair my relationship with BBEdit! 
Try this with BBEdit to see what I mean: Type Three words left. into both BBEdit and TextEdit, making sure to include the period at the end. Put your cursor all the way to the right of the text. See how many times you have to press option-left to move the cursor all the way to the left. Then start over and see how many times you have to press option-delete to delete all the way to the left. For me, the numbers are most certainly different between the two apps.
I emailed Bare Bones Software about this a couple years ago, and received this reply:
Thank you for writing in and apropos of your observations, what you see is both the intended and expected behavior of these word motion key gestures. We have however gotten a number of previous requests like yours to provide an option to match the OS’s word motion behavior, and this is on our list for attention in a future version so I’ll be happy to add your comments to the existing case.
So-called “word motion behavior” is not something I’ve been able to affect by fiddling with keyboard shortcuts (which I do way more than is healthy); and given their reply, I don’t think it’s something I changed nor could change myself (though it’s a good thought).
If not for this behavior, I’d use BBEdit a lot more. It is otherwise so slick and powerful. In fact, I think I’ll email them back right now to check on the status of this request. Thanks again for your replies and hope I have not hijacked this thread too much.
I have BBedit but very rarely use it. I think the only times are when looking at XML. I am clearly in a minority of one because I edit text in Word. I very occasionally edit program code but as I use an IDE I use the source code editor there.
I have been keeping my paid-for copy of BBedit up to date because I think it is a classic Mac program which does not suffer from all of the ills of cross-platform editors in this era of a dwindling number of products with a truly Mac-like user interface. It is an extremely powerful editor, but I unfortunately use it only infrequently since Xcode and TeXshop have their own editors.
My only complaint, which is probably somewhat superficial, is its lack of smooth scrolling.
It is however nice to get quick responses from Rich when there is a problem. He is one of the greats in the Mac developer world.
I see. Opt-left behaves the same in both apps moving through the word and its space. Opt-Delete behaves similarly in TextEdit but BBedit requires separate Opt-Delete’s for the spaces. I’ve never noticed that, I believe because I tend to use Shift-Opt-left, then Delete in most cases.
I see what you mean. I pre-select words (like Will B) and hit delete once to remove the entire set in most cases, so I never got into the opt-delete habit.
@Will_B @macguyver – The differences actually go a little further. In BBEdit, Opt-Arrow treats punctuation separately from words. So, in my original example, in BBEdit it takes four taps of Opt-Left to move backward through Three words left. (if you start after the period), whereas in TextEdit (or other apps that respect macOS’s word motion behavior), it takes only three taps. The same thing goes if you hold down shift, ie (in the example you both gave) if tapping Shift-Opt-Left then Delete. Add a comma into the middle of the text, and that’ll require yet an extra tap to navigate in BBEdit, but not in TextEdit.
This divergence from macOS behavior has always suprised me, because I agree that in other respects, BBEdit does indeed have:
Interesting! I didn’t notice this difference. I agree, it is odd, though I can understand why it might be better in some cases despite the larger number of keystrokes.
That is a significant difference.
My example is based on mostly word processing style editing, whereas I suspect BBEdit is designed for people editing code. In that case I would assume the comma is like any other special character that can be part of a tag or command and must be treated as a separate entity.
It has been a while since I edited HTML code but it would be a problem over time if every bracket or character were lumped with the nearest group (or “word”).