How Microsoft Word Broke My Dreams

One of my favorite features of Word is the ability to add words to your "dictionary" so that the program will recognize it and stop underlining it with that vicious-looking squiggly red line. This situation presented itself last night as I was writing a response for an essay I read. The sentence read like so: "[The author] seemed to be making an attempt to quell the concerns of an ocean of trepidatious writers". As I reviewed with pride the line that I had written, I saw the the word "trepidatious" was underlined with that squiggly red line! I thought to myself, Surely this fabulous word is actually real. Could it be that I have made up a word that no one has thought to use before? I decided that whether it was real or not, I would leave it in my paper and add the word to my handy dandy dictionary (not to be confused with the handy dandy notebook). As I selected "Add to Dictionary", I expected the judgment of the red squiggle to fade away, leaving only the happiness of a new word learned behind it. Alas, this was not to be. No matter how many times I tried to add "trepidatious" to my dictionary, Word refused to actually add the word and the squiggle remained! Why, Word, why?! I questioned in pain. Why do you not allow me to add words to my dictionary? I really have no idea why it wouldn't work. I've added all sorts of words: French words, Shakespearean words, even Middle English. I was completely baffled.

The story ends thusly (which is definitely a word that I had to add to the dictionary): I printed my response out and turned it in, regardless of the opinion of my word processing software. Later, as I prepared to commit this tale to my blog, I looked up the word to find out once and for all if it was actually a real word. The answer...is yes! Trepidatious is a word! If you care to see the physical proof, you may do so here.

And that is how Microsoft Word broke (or at least attempted to break) my dreams.