Quotes and Apostrophes in ERAS PS

[kas23]

Hi Everyone,
I hope someone can help me. After cutting and pasting my personal statement text file into ERAS and saving it, on the saved view of my PS, there are a bunch of question marks where my apostrophes and quotes should be. Furthermore, when I print my PS from this screen, the question marks are still there. Is this what the programs are going to see? If so, how do I fix this? Thanks a lot.

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[BellKicker]

I think the best thing to do would be to correct the question marks directly in ERAS. If it's too many question-marks, I'm not sure. You used plain text format, right? Some use wordpad; you could try that.

 

[Gauss]

just edit it, go back in and fix it
it's a primitive text document that can't convert worth crap
can't even indent paragraphs???!
anyone figure that one out yet?

 

[Erica Lewinski]

just edit it, go back in and fix it
it's a primitive text document that can't convert worth crap
can't even indent paragraphs???!
anyone figure that one out yet?

Even after charging so much amount per application, can't they afford a better, state of the art scanner software?

[Every program should demand a nice CD made of the application material directly from the applicant him/herself! This can be in addition to the, perhaps cheaply-scanned gibberish that they may be receiving from the ERAS, imho! Then, that could be perceived as an additional indicator of a candidate's strong dedication to join their program! Heck, I'll send a recorded DVD! Every PD office now-a-days has a decent PC for sure, that can access the digital application package! In the recorded DVD, I would like to send a 1-hour interview (self Q-A'd), so that, they can pre-evaluate and either call me right-away or save the travel-expenses! Plus, at the end of the season, every one in the department would have thousands of free-coasters to use! ... speaking on the lighter-side of things of course! This will happen one day, I'm sure ... that day may be 20 years into the future though! ].

 

[BellKicker]

I've been sending complimentary DVDs with homemade porn out to all the coordinators. I hope this isn't considered a faux pas.

 

[BellKicker]

just edit it, go back in and fix it
it's a primitive text document that can't convert worth crap
can't even indent paragraphs???!
anyone figure that one out yet?

Gauss, do you plan to indent manually? I usually don't indent and in the few examples of personal statements I've seen, the authors haven't indented, either. In scientific journals I believe it's optional.

What's everyone doing?

 

[kas23]

Indentation is done by pressing the spacebar 4-5 times at the beginning of each paragraph.

I can't just go back in and change my question marks to quotes and apostrophes because that is how they appear in the text before I save it. I can't possibly be the only one having this problem....

I'll try notepad.

 

[kas23]

You guys were right. I fixed it.

 

[BellKicker]

Indentation is done by pressing the spacebar 4-5 times at the beginning of each paragraph.

You too, kas23? Is indentation a must or what?

 

[kas23]

Don't you love it???

 

[BellKicker]

No. Seriously. As the stupid foreign guy who's never written a PS in his life........ can I NOT use indentations and not look like an idiot?

(Like I need this stress on opening day......)

 

[starayamoskva]

No. Seriously. As the stupid foreign guy who's never written a PS in his life........ can I NOT use indentations and not look like an idiot?

(Like I need this stress on opening day......)

After you get your PS done in microsoft word, cut and paste it into word pad then save it as plain text (.txt), then copy and paste the saved file into ERAS and no more ugly red question marks all through your PS

 

[BellKicker]

LOL, what?!?

 

[Blade28]

Agreed, use a plain-text editor like Notepad to copy your PS, then paste it into ERAS. I also had to convert all those ?s to 's after copying and pasting from Word.

 

[Smurfette]

Two questions re: personal statements. I think I am getting too close to the end as I am now obsessing over every little thing. Hopefully once I submit everything my neurotic tendencies can relax.

1. When I click on "print PS", and then print that page off my browser, it is exactly one page....is this identical to the page size the PDs get (the font looks very small and it was actually four lines longer than a page in Word) or is there another way to check? I guess I am wondering if it is printing off smaller than it actually is due to my browser settings or if it is printing in the formatting (that the PDs will actually see) done by ERAS.

2. Are we supposed to put our name at the top of our PS? Am I to assume that when PDs download my PS, somehow my name and ID# will be attached to the document? Or do I need to allot space for my name somewhere?

 

[Blade28]

If it helps, the font all the PDs see is Courier New, 10-pt, I believe.