Q about LOR format when cut-and-pasted to ERAS

[Taus]

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woops...I meant personal statement format (not LOR)

Anyway...

I noticed that my indentations before paragraphs were taken out, which makes the document look like one large and busy paragraph.

Do most people just add a blank line in b/w paragraphs?

 

[Samoa]

Yes.

 

[Taus]

thanks

 

[NotAProgDirector]

Because ERAS uses only plain text, and MS Word uses "rich text", much formatting and other information is lost when you cut and paste. The fancy curly quotes get replaced with crazy characters, etc. PD's all ignore this, but it's best avoided.

Several ways to address this:

1. Cut and paste from Word into Notepad. You will then need to fix any errors in this document.

2. Write the whole thing in Notepad.

3. Save the file as plaintext. In Word, Save (or Save As...) the file, under filetype chose Plaintext (*.txt). When then next window opens, choose the MS-DOS characterset. If you've already written the PS, any "illegal" characters will be highlighted in red, you can choose the "substitute" option to fix them, and then edit the document once saved. You can do this before you write the PS (i.e. save a blank file as a plaintext file) to avoid the problem also.

 

[tetris]

Do what aPD said then reread it on ERAS, watching for any apostrophes and other punctuation marks. They should be indicated by a green question mark, I think. You need to manually type in those characters the way you want them to appear.