Okay, here's a tip I read about ages ago and promptly forgot. But it's a good one because I know I'm not the only person who has accidentally added a misspelled word to the Microsoft Word dictionary. It's really easy to do.
You probably run the spelling checker all the time. (If not, you should.) Anyway, you run a spell check by choosing Tools|Spelling and Grammar or by pressing the F7 key. So you merrily let Word go through your document and one time instead of pressing Ignore on a weird word, you click Add. Now every time the spell checker encounters that word, instead of marking it as suspect, it flies right by it because you told Word it's correct.
If you have Word set to do spell checking as you type (a.k.a. the squiggly red underlines) it's even easier to add words accidentally. You just right click and with a slip of the mouse, you've added instead of ignored a word.
In any case, adding misspelled words to the dictionary counts as one of those "oops" moments when you wish you could turn back time. But it's not set in stone. You can edit the dictionary and take out your bad words (so to speak).
Choose Tools|Options and click the Spelling and Grammar tab. Now click the Dictionaries button. You see a list of Custom Dictionaries with the one you're using selected. (Most people just have one.) Now click Edit. A window opens with a list of all the words in the dictionary. This page is just a text file that you can edit. Highlight the problem word and press the Delete key to remove it. Then choose File|Close, and when Word asks you if you want to save the file, click Yes.
While you're editing the file, you also can add words. So if you know you're going to have a document with a lot of odd words, you can just add them into the dictionary text file directly, instead of adding them during a spell check. Just type in one word per line and save the file.
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