As many of you know, this weekend I’m finishing up a sex guidebook, The Adventurous Couple’s Guide to Strap-On Sex. Over the years I’ve noticed some funny things around Word and spell-check. Mostly, I have to add a lot of words, from “prostatic” to “Feeldoe“. But I’ve noticed that Word is reluctant to suggest some sex words as spelling alternatives when it doesn’t recognize what I wrote. For instance, if I write “Windoze” and spell-check it, the program will suggest “Windows” and a few other alternate words. If I insist on my spelling and click “ignore” it tells me I picked a word not in the dictionary, and am I sure I want to continue?

But with some sex words, it behaves differently. Here’s an example I’m running into repeatedly tonight: in my draft, I typed dildo as “didlo” a couple of times. Word’s spell-check caught it as a mistake and suggested the following words: dido, idol, dodo and dado. But when I corrected the spelling to “dildo” it unhighlighted (what it does with correct spellings), and when I clicked “ignore” it didn’t tell me I was using a word outside the dictionary or if I was sure I wanted to continue.

So, it knows how to spell “dildo”. Why won’t it offer me the correct suggestion in the list?

* I’m also noticing that Firefox’s spell-check thinks “dildo” is a mistake, too.