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Mathematics Institute

Machine Readability

Note: The following is relevant only for written assignments that use Turnitin.

Do NOT use the "Print to PDF" function! This is known to produce files that are not machine-readable.

All written assignments that use Turnitin are required to be machine-readable. As all LaTeX generators work differently, there’s no definitive set-up to ensure the correct result.

The easiest method to check machine-readability is to search the pdf using any software, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, that does not have automatic OCR functions built in (i.e. do not use Mac OS's Preview software). Search for a common word; if it is able to search the text, then it is machine-readable. Try a few words, to be sure.

To find the pdf created when compiling with (eg) TeXmaker, look in the folder where the tex file was saved and there should be a pdf file with the same name. This pdf should be machine readable:

Image of Windows folder containg PDF and TEX files with the same name

Do NOT open and re-print to pdf. Printing to pdf causes files to lose their machine-readability:

Image of print button circled with 'Do not use this' written next to it

For further tips on using Latex, see this helpful, Maths-focused LaTeX guide.