Resume Writers Digest Creating an ASCII Text Resume

Resume Writers' Digest Creating an ASCII Text Resume Creating an ASCII or Text Résumé1. Open the clients original resume file (in any word processing program).2. Convert all text into a non-proportional font. From the edit menu, choose select all. Choose Courier font, size 12.3. Adjust the margins so there are no more than 65 to 70 characters on any line. Set the right margin to 2 and the top, left and bottom margins to 1.4. From the file menu, choose save as. Rename the file (such as BrooksTextOnly.txt). From the Save File as Type drop-down menu, choose Text Only.5. Close the file. (From the file menu, choose close.)Fixing Up An ASCII or Text Résumé1. Open either Notepad (Windows PCs) or Simpletext (Mac). Open the text-only file you created in Part A (above). (From the file menu, choose open and then select the correct file.)2. Fix all obvious character wrap problems for example, tabs that are no longer aligned. (If it was a right tab, press return and put it on its own line, for example.)3. Fix the Résumé Header Information. Put each line of information on a separate line (name, address, city/state/zip, etc.)4. Fix problems created by substitutions for non-keyboard characters. Replace bullets and font-based characters (such as Wingdings or Zapf Dingbats) with keyboard characters such as ??, *, -, -- or (+).5. Create sections by adding spacing. Put two lines before topic headings (such as Education and Work Experience). Also use visible keyboard characters (such as ####, ----, ====, ~~~~, or >>>>>) to separate out topic headings.6. Make sure everything is lined up in one column. If you used multiple columns or tabs in the formatted résumé, remove them, as the formatting will not come through on the ASCII version of the résumé.7. Remove extraneous information such as continued notations, second headers for second pages, page breaks, etc.8. Save the file again. Then close the file, open it up one more time and check to assure all changes were made.