Beyond its editorial explanation, Words of Mormon briefly narrates events from Mormon's own generation, centuries after Omni, describing King Benjamin leading his people in war against the Lamanites and later against a group of dissenters, and noting the ministry of prophets warning against wickedness in Mormon's own time. This places Words of Mormon oddly out of chronological sequence: it is positioned in the book between the small plates, which end around the time of King Benjamin's father, and the beginning of Mosiah, which opens with Benjamin himself already old, yet its author is writing from centuries later than either.
That layering, an ancient editor's voice interrupting the flow of the older record he is transmitting, is unique in the Book of Mormon to this single short book, and it gives readers one of their clearest direct statements of how Mormon understood his own role: not as a passive copyist but as an editor making deliberate choices about what to include, in what order, and why, choices Words of Mormon states explicitly rather than leaving for readers to infer from the finished compilation alone.
Because Words of Mormon supplies the only surviving account of events between the small plates and the main abridgment, it also functions as the sole surviving link connecting King Benjamin's war narrative to the version of him readers meet at the opening of Mosiah, without which the transition between the two records would be considerably harder to follow.