I have had this happen to me with Word (if only I didn't have to use it ) I am assuming you have a new version of Office XP. My version is old (2002) running on Windows XP. I fixed this by disabling the Smart Tags in Word. Try this and see if this works for you:

1. Go to Tools, Auto Correct Options
2. Click the Smart Tags tab at the top of the dialog box.
3. Clear the box that says Label text with smart tags

Hope that helps.