I’d like to never, ever take the chance of writing "Pubic Affairs’ instead of “Public Affairs”. I can’t see that I ever need to write “pubic” at work, so I’d like the dictionary to think it’s spelled wrong. Thoughts?
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/General/ExcludeWordFromDic.htm
Come on, it’s the first hit in the help file when you search for “dictionary”! 
No way to do it from within Word, huh? I don’t have access to the files; we’re on a Citrix server. Darn it.
Thanks anyway!
You’ll want to add as many other possibly embarrassing “real words” to your exclusion dictionary, such as asses/assess, martial/marital, cunt/count . . . I’m on deadline right now, or I’d open mine and give you a few more. Oh, also less embarrassing but still easily mistyped: lean/learn, mange/manage, manger/manager, change/chance, angel/angle . . .
You could record a macro that would highlight all of your problem words:
Find: pubic
Replace: leave box blank, but click More > Format > Highlight.
Kind of a wonky fix, but doable.
How about just using AutoCorrect? Word Options->Proofing->AutoCorrect Options. Check “Replace text as you type” and enter “Pubic” under Replace and “Public” under With. Maybe not ideal, because I guess you can’t guarantee that when you typed “pubic” you meant “public”, but at least the typo will be less embarassing.
Although come to think of it, you could tell it to replace “pubic” with “xjslksdjf”, and then it would get underlined as misspelled.
I’m not sure if that’s going to work in your Citrix environment. I suppose it would affect all users, would it?
I don’t know, I’ll try it, Mr Squishy (what an awesome username). But I don’t know that anybody really needs to type the word pubic at work.
Well, I think it’s safe to say that the three times I typed “pubic” above were the first three times I’ve ever typed it at work. Oops, now there’s a fourth. Hopefully that will be the end of it. 
Strippers, when filing worker’s comp claims.
Mika, you can set the autocorrect options to that any time you type “pubic affairs,” Word will change it to “Public Affairs.” You may wish to put it other possible misspellings, or even automatically change “pubic” to “public” as you type.
ETA: And I shall others have already suggested that. But I still think it’s a good idea. As much as I despise Word in general, I love Autocorrect; I add an entry at least once a day. For me that’s a better fix than screwing with the dictionary, as I don’t trust spellecheck in the first place.
[humorless mode]
Strippers tend to be independent contractors. I don’t they they qualify for worker’s comp.
[/hm]
David Pogue (computer columnist for the New York Times) has written about how he uses things like AutoCorrect to increase his productivity. So if you often have to type a phrase, you can program the software so that it replaces “PA” with “public affairs”. This can be a useful thing if you often write on the same subjects frequently.