Keeping comments in Word after deleting associated text

I'm using the newest version of Microsoft Word (2017) and want the comments in the review pane to remain. Every time I delete the text that comment relates to, the comment disappears entirely. How do I delete the text while keeping the comment displayed in the right-hand pane?

It can be done with a workaround. Put whitespace into the commented text.

Say you have some commented text, it shows in Word with brackets:

Insert some whitespace, e.g. just a space within this text. Not at either the beginning or the end.

Now delete the text but leave the space between the brackets:

You now have a comment applied to no text, only to a space.
You have not deleted the commented text, just edited it to a space.
This isn't ideal as the presence of a space at that point of your document may not be convenient. However, it does provide a workaround.

I didn't check thoroughly, but I just found out that the comment remains in place if I delete the text word-by-word (ctrl-del or ctrl-backspace). The idea of a comment being a child to text makes sense, but if I keep the deleted text visible through "track changes", I want the comment to remain visible as well (so as to communicate to editors, indeed).