A system and method for non-speech input or keypad-aided word and spelling recognition is disclosed. The method comprises performing spelling recognition via automatic speech recognition (ASR) on received speech from a user, the ASR being performed using a statistical letter model trained on domain data and producing a letter lattice R.sub.LN. If an ASR confidence is below a predetermined level, then the method comprises receiving non-speech input from the user, generating a keypad constraint grammar K and generating a letter string based on a composition of finite state transducers R.sub.LN and K. Other variations of the invention include recognizing input by first receiving non-speech input, dynamically generating an unweighted grammar, generating a weighted grammar using domain data, and then performing speech, and thus spelling, recognition on input speech using the weighted grammar.