This is a topic usually never discussed and may be rather unimportant to the game, yet for the PC players of this game a valid question. I love using Addshout command to give my followers shouts, however I notice that it seems to corrupt saves afterwards. Does anyone have any insight on this matter and is there a way to add shouts to random npc's without corrupting the game or save files? Any help at all would be great. thanks!

console commands have always been a fairly iffy way to get things done

have you tried Opening up the Creation Kit and adding the shouts to the NPC via it, then save it as a .esp file and enable it in your data files?

At the risk of sounding like a complete noob, I don't even know what the creation kit is. I've only had 2 mods in my skyrim career: ponytail styles and multiple followers lite... both of which are quite lightweight mods. (Assuming creation kit is a mod right?)

creation kit is the tool Bethesda released that you use to make mods...

Its pretty user Friendly, and for what you want it would be extremely easy.. Just look through the list for the NPC you want to give shouts to, open up their "window", and then just drag the shout onto the list of what ones they know..