help with eras and personal statement formatting

[daisygirl]

Sorry if this has been addressed before....

I saved my personal statement as a text only final in courier 10 point as per ERAS. When viewing my copied and pasted statement in ERAS, I noticed that all of the apostrophe signs are appearing as question marks.

Can someone provide some guidance as to how to get ERAS to recognize the apostrophe marks? Thanks

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[electra]

Usually ERAS has a section on the website where you can get an answer to this type of question. They are pretty strict about the formatting.
You might try printing a copy and seeing what it looks like once it is printed.
If it is still bad, you may be best off deleting it and just typing the statement directly in the form and then copying it if you want to personalize statements for each program. Yeah, it's a little more work. But better safe than sorry.

 

[TommyGunn04]

Are you using MS Word, or another program? I used Word and saved my PS as a "plain text" .txt file, and didn't have a problem with apostrophes. You don't need to save it in courier or in 10 point size by the way...that might be the problem. They mention the font and size just so you know what it will look like to the programs reading it, so you can get an idea of how much will fit on a page, but the actual ERAS formatting doesn't care what font you paste it in as since it's a "plain text format," which by definition should not allow you to specify another font. Once you get the .txt, open it with WordPad and make sure it looks right, then just copy and paste into ERAS. You really shouldn't have any problems with apostrophes if you follow this rubric, unless you're using some weird non-standard characters.

 

[daisygirl]

Thanks for the help. I did use the help section in ERAS regarding ensuring a smooth transfer of the personal statement, however, for some reason the apostrophes were considered special characters. I simply edited them in ERAS directly and they were then accepted.

 

[12R34Y]

Thanks for the help. I did use the help section in ERAS regarding ensuring a smooth transfer of the personal statement, however, for some reason the apostrophes were considered special characters. I simply edited them in ERAS directly and they were then accepted.

you can't have a word (.doc) document. You have to hit "save as" and then change it to a .txt document (plain text). then close it. then open it again and cut and paste. works like a charm.

all of this is on the eras site.

later

 

[lmh14]

even if you cut and paste a .txt document, some of the characters show up as question marks. but, as someone said, if you go in and edit directly on eras, you can put the characters back in. but be sure to save periodically if you end up spending a significant amount of time editing directly on eras. it will log you out and your changes don't automatically save. good luck all!