Do spaces count as characters in P.S.?

[MDGirl]

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???

 

[lola]

yes, i believe so.

 

[Sweet Tea]

yep. they sure do.

 

[Tweetie_bird]

🙁 unfortunately yes.

So it's a total of 5300 chars, right? or is it 5100??

 

[MDGirl]

It's 5300. And, thanks for your replies!

 

[shorrin]

I think returns cost more in spaces, but someone check me on that....

 

[Sweet Tea]

I think returns are 2 spaces...

 

[relatively prime]

They don't give us enough space dammit! I was reading Barron's "Essays that will get you into medical school" and the sample essays are WAY longer than 5300 characters. What gives?!?

 

[lola]

it's funny, because my essay is way shorter than 5300 characters! i don't know how you guys write so much.

 

[Tweetie_bird]

ok, so here's info from some experienced premed advisors--

1. Spaces count as one char. RETURNS count as TWO. TAB counts as FIVE chars.

2. To save space, do not double space any of your stuff. Do not double space between two paragraphs. Just hit one ENTER.

3. To save space, it's ok (but I am not sure if I should do this) to space just ONCE instead of twice after a full0-stop, just ONCE afer a colon etc.

You should be able to add a whole freakin line after all these changes! whooopdeedoo (sarcasm), right? 🙄

 

[relatively prime]

There's an issue with paragraphs... if any of you have have tried prining your application, you might have realized that your paragraphs aren't broken up as they should be. The only way I know how to solve this problem is by manually typing in the HTML code for "new paragraph" which is <p> at the beginning of the paragraph, followed by </p> at the end of the paragraph.

🙂

 

[Tweetie_bird]

thanks! there's 3 more characters gone. 🙄

RP, do we have to space before or after this thing? So when we push ENTER for a new paragraph, then we type in <p> and start?

 

[relatively prime]

•••quote:•••Originally posted by Tweetie_bird:
•thanks! there's 3 more characters gone. 🙄

RP, do we have to space before or after this thing? So when we push ENTER for a new paragraph, then we type in <p> and start?•••••You don't have to put a space after it or hit enter or anything... it's just like this....

<p>blah blah blah.... and more blah... yada yada yada... and that's why I want to be a doctor... blah blah blah... and you should accept me because... yada yada yada</p><p>so while doing research here and there and everywhere... and blah blah yada... at yada blah medical school... then I volunteered at XYZ hospital to help kids with XYZ syndrome... blah blah blah.. I felt this and that... and that reminded me of when my mom got really sick when I was twelve...etc... blah blah</p>

Get it? that's it... no spaces, no ENTER, no RETURN... just the <p>'s and the </p>'s.

Fun, right? 😀

If anyone knows a better way... let us know!

 

[relatively prime]

Tweetie... you should learn the art of cutting out unneccessary words..."word-weeding" as I like to call it. I had a major problem with length until my mom, an English major and a doctor pointed out to me where I could cut out words. She didn't tell me what to write or anything like that... she just pointed out places where I said the same thing twice or used unnecessary words. I think I'm pretty good at word-weeding now... so if you want me to help you I'd be glad to. 🙂

 

[maitai]

i don't know if anything's been changed or not, but i seem to remember from last year's amcas that it said that although if we printed it out we wouldn't see the paragraph breaks, med schools would get the correct version, so you could just hit enter to start a new paragraph. i'm betting it's the same this year, so i wouldn't bother with the <p>s.