[Taxacom] microsoft ex Re; Research Assistant ? Solanaceae DNA Taxonomy

[Dr. David Campbell]

While I have plenty of gripes about Microsoft (of relevance to taxonomic 
work is the fact that the statistics and matrix functions built into 
Excel are not always reliable-enter the formulas yourself, check 
manually for multiple modes, etc.), I believe that "It is advisable that 
candidates prepare their answers to the questions in word document which 
can be transferred into the online application form"  may be translated 
as "Our form is not the greatest place to compose and edit answers.  Do 
it first in your word processor."  Specific reference to Microsoft Word, 
if intended, would mean "We have tested this for Microsoft Word.  If you 
use some other program, formatting may get screwed up because 
purportedly interchangeable things aren't."  In reality, it's not a bad 
idea to take a look at the review screen even if you used Word, since 
the formatting sometimes changes despite using the "recommended" 
program.  Cf. the paper I found online yesterday, in which the OCR had 
hopelessly garbled the author and institution section (presumably thrown 
off by Turkish diacritical marks, but still that's no reason to have 
random stuff with lines of text superimposed on each other).  Which 
raises the risk of restarting the argument about online versus paper 
publications.  

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections Building
Department of Biological Sciences
Biodiversity and Systematics
University of Alabama, Box 870345
Tuscaloosa AL 35487-0345  USA