Use Plain Text
You want to put plain, unformatted text into the text boxes on your profile page. This way the website can style the text to match the rest of the site, and new entries will not look different. There are three ways to get plain text into the boxes:
- Type directly into the box. Manually entering any text will always be unformatted.
- Cut and Paste from another source into a plain text editor before cutting and pasting it into the website. If you cut and paste directly from some other source (such as another website or a word document), the website will attempt to match all of the styling of the originating document. But if you first paste the text into a plain text editor (such as Notepad on a Windows machine, or Notes on a Mac), this will remove the formatting, and the result can be safely cut and pasted into your profile page.
- If you have cut and pasted text that has formatting attached to it into a profile page editor, you can remove the formatting by selecting the text you want to unformat, then clicking the blue rectangular eraser button in the editor (at the end of the first box of icons). This will strip the text of any added styles, and will allow the website to style the text to match the rest of the site.
Make Multiple Entries in a Box into a Bullet List
If you have multiple items in a box--for example, a number of publications--you should make this a bullet (unordered) list, using the button at the top of the editor (the button with the 3 dots and lines, to the left of the button with 1-2-3 on it). The website styles these lists with a faint line between the items.
If you need to add new items to an existing bullet list, you can either un-bullet the original list, then select all the items and re-bullet the list (toggling the button at the top of the editor), or simply highlight the new items and a few of the existing bullets, then click the bullet list button. If you simply select the new items and click the bullet list button in the editor, it will make a list, but a separate list from the existing one. It would be better to have all items in a single list.
Beware of Timing Out
IS&T's Touchstone authentication will "time out" after an hour's inactivity, and will require being sent to the Touchstone server and back to re-validate the login. There is no need for re-entering credentials/Duo after timing out, but any unsaved changes to your profile page will be lost. If you expect to be away from your keyboard for an extended period of time, please save your work.
For more information regarding IS&T's Touchstone, see http://ist.mit.edu/web/touchstone/faqs
If you would like any assistance in formatting or entering your information, please contact me-webmaster@mit.edu