When I copy a few lines of pure text from a website and paste it into Word, it first pastes one black egg-shaped dot/image. When I look at the Paste Special options, the 2 options are image types, not text, even though I only copied text. Then, strangely, when I copy the same text again then hit paste in the same Word document, it then pastes the text correctly without any strange dot/image. I am using Word 2010 Home Professional. Why is this happening and how can I fix it?

It's probably all to do with exactly what you had selected. A slight change in the selection can affect what's actually copied. Some web sites also employ security measures to restrict/interfere with copying & pasting their content.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Good guess, but that doesn't explain why it pastes correctly the 2nd time after the same text was copied. Actually, the text was still highlighted on the original webpage when I went back and copiedx it again, so I did nothing different to cause a different paste result. This happens on multiple webpages that are just text. This is a real mystery.