trouble in expanding a term

I use the short cut astdc for the paragraph " allergic shiners, the dark circles...."

But when IT expands it in Word 97 with the space bar I get the following. a llergic shiners the dark.... etc.

Is there something in IT or Word 97 that puts a space after the a in allergic. (It is funny that in this forum screen it seemed to expand just fine without the space after the a. Any ideas why word 97 would be doing this.) Thanks....