<p>I submitted my common app supplement, and on my essay, hyphens are appearing as this S character with some formation on the top. Will this seriously play a factor in my acceptance. What should I do? I’m freaking out!</p>
<p>I saw that when I print previewed, something you probably should have done. However, I can’t see it being that big of a deal considering the adcoms know what it should be. </p>
<p>On the other hand, they might wonder why you didn’t print preview what you submitted especially considering you need to sign off that you have.</p>
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<p>Are you on a Mac? If so, the characters may well look correct if read on a PC.</p>
<p>The problem relates to outdated website programming by the Common App. The original ASCII ID numbers from 129 to 255 resulted in displaying different characters on Macs and PCs. Letters and numbers weren’t affected, but dashes and curly quotes and characters like the one-half fractions were. Standard html calls the ASCII ID numbers, but there has long been a fix called UniCode which always displays the correct character or symbol in any language you can find on the Internet.</p>
<p>I would guess that the folks who read these files see these problems all the time.</p>