This may seem trivial to some, but I am genuinely worried. Basically on my common app essay there are no grammatical errors, however, at the end of two lines the last words are chopped in half to look like this:
hell
o
It happened twice, so two words in my essay are cut in half.
I tried to fix it several times before submission with no luck. I even rewrote my entire essay into the application, again no luck. Do you think colleges will frown upon this and see it as careless? Do you think I should contact them saying it wasn’t my fault, I tried to fix it with no luck? Finally, did anyone else have any formatting issues??
There is no need to contact colleges. This is a trivial error and will not have any negative ramifications on your application.
In fact, I had the same issue as well. I believe it occurs when you try to use em dashes in your essays. I myself tried to fix this error to no avail, and even though I knew the cause of the problem, I decided to retain my use of em dashes (I felt they were necessary for my essay) rather than delete them just to fix a minor technical issue. It all worked out fine, as I was recently admitted to a Top 20 university ED.
@Episteme thanks for your reply!
The main goal of my post was to find out if anyone had the same issue for my own reassurance, so thanks. Haha yes it would be rather petty to contact admissions for such a trivial “error”, but again I thought they may perceive me as careless if I was the only one.
I realize now it was those stupid dashes - but just like you I probably would have kept them in my essay anyways.
Congratulations on the acceptance and thanks again!