Out of the approximately 35,000 citations in the Windows version of Old Testament Abstracts on CD-ROM, there are a small portion of citations, 235, with abstracts that rely on special formatting to convey information (e.g. poetic, chiasmic, and concentric formatting). This special formatting utilizes fixed width characters that were originally created in a print environment or in a DOS environment. For an example of an abstract that incorporated special formatting, please refer to record number 2002-OCT-2036 in the Old Testament Abstracts application.

Display of these specially formatted abstracts within the Windows application of the Old Testament Abstracts application will often not convey the information as the author intended, since the special formatting relies on the use of fixed width font and the Windows version of Old Testament Abstracts relies on a proportional font.

Any of these 235 citations can be printed up without problem if they are printed without the Abstract field. It is possible, however, to print some of the specially formatted abstracts with a fixed width font; when printing these specially formatted citations with abstracts, users can go through Printer Setup and choose Fixed Width Font as a default print option, as well as a fixed-width font (for example, Courier New, or Lucida Console). This will print up the majority of the records with their original formatting. However, there still exists a small set (within the set of 235 specially formatted records) that causes print errors such as extra page feeds when printing their abstracts with their citations.

ATLA recommends exporting any data set with specially formatted abstracts within it if the user wants to obtain the complete abstract shown in a fixed width font. When exporting, export the specially formatted citations using the Formatted Export option in the export menu. This will automatically export the citations with a fixed width font.