I have a model I'm working on for practice that looks okay when in object mode, but when I put it into edit mode, there's ...

Thank you! I will do this. : ) I initially had the shape in a few different sections, the first third, middle and last, but dissolved the faces together thinking to be clever to save on some faces. I will add an edge. I do have a follow up question though. This is a blade for a sword model i'm practicing with. I plan to make the hilt, grip and pommel out of separate shapes. I took a class in college using Maya, and that required that you fused vertices of separate meshes together to create one coherent mesh. Do you need to do something similar in Blender? Or can you just smack the objects together and join them?

I will keep them separate then. Thank you again. : D I appreciate it, and am enjoying the lessons so far!