[Aspell-user] Treat "et al." as one word?

[Steve M. Robbins]

Hi,

Some academic writing styles use a lot of "Joe et al."
constructions in the citations.  

I'd like to spell check such documents with aspell, and it
complains about "et" and "al" each time.  I could add each
of those into my personal word list, but I'd hate to keep
missing typos of "at".

Is there any way to have aspell to treat "et al."  (with the period!)
as one word?

Thanks,
-S