A strange thing happens in Microsoft Word when I try to use my smiley

A strange thing happens in Microsoft Word when I try to use my smiley face :-)
It automatically turns into a real smiley face! How do I stop this from happening?
- Jill

This question was answered on August 19, 2002. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

There is an old saying for computer anomalies that goes something like, “It’s a feature, not a bug, silly!” And in this case it actually is a feature referred to as AutoCorrect.

Microsoft introduced AutoCorrect many years ago for the many millions of us that misspell common words on a regular basis For instance, if you try to type too fast and start a sentence with “teh”, it will automatically replace it with “The” as soon as you press the space bar to go to the next word.

There is a library of common misspellings and their proper replacements as well as common symbols (such as the smiley face) that are, by default, set to replace your typed text.

In your case, if you don’t want the ‘emoticon’ to change to the smiley face symbol, you can simply press the backspace key right after the text turns into the symbol to return it text.

If you want to permanently disable this particular symbol, you can go into the AutoCorrect list and remove it by clicking on Tools, then AutoCorrect Once the list comes up, you will see the symbols are located at the top of the list and can be selected and deleted.

Because the user can modify the AutoCorrect word list, it can also be turned into a handy shorthand method for commonly used phrases or signatures

For instance, if I did not want to have to type out my entire name, title, e-mail address, web address, etc in a document whenever I needed it, I could create an entry in the AutoCorrect library that is associated with an abbreviation.

To do this, simply type (in your document) the string of text that you want to add to the AutoCorrect list, then highlight it with your mouse by clicking and dragging over the text until it is all selected

Next, click on Tools, then AutoCorrect which should open the AutoCorrect window with the text that you highlighted in the ‘With’ box Type the abbreviation (such as ‘namesig’) that you want to use as the shorthand in the ‘Replace’ box and click on the OK button Remember to use abbreviations that will never be used as a word in any circumstance or you will have created a real annoyance!

Now test the new entry by typing the abbreviation (in this case ‘namesig’) and pressing the spacebar.

You are limited to 255 characters for any single entry; so don’t get too carried away with large paragraphs.

This feature is a great way to introduce foreign words, industry specific phrases, company contact information or anything that you tend to type on a repetitive basis.

If you really the shorthand feature and want it to be available in other applications such as a spreadsheet, point of sale or accounting application, you can download a free utility from PC Magazine called “RoboType 3” at pcmag.com/utilities that provides a very similar function.