Just for future clarification, applications.menu is in
Unexpectedly, that not only took care of the multiple Abiword menu items, it also zapped my entire menu dead. It was totally empty. Happily, ranasing, suggested to run:

cp /etc/xdg/menus/applications.menu /home/user/.osso/menus/applications.menu

This seems to rebuilt my menu. All the additional apps now show up in extras, but this is easily re-categorized. Interestingly all the icons are now BIG rather than some being small. So now more easily seen. (debernardis, since you're here, thanks for the trick of saving .doc files as .pdf in Abiword, and then using lpr to send to the printer. It works great in a pinch).