In message <B5E45DD4A43B4E319523EE09C7E996CE@JimRamaleyPC>, Jim Ramaley <jramaley@comcast.net> writes: [] >have. A major "error" that I may have is that I may not know the name >of a spouse and if a correspondent reviews a report that completely >ignores a spouse, he/she may not realize that the name is missing. That is a good point, that unknowns draw more attention to missing data than blank lines; as another poster has said, "___ ___" cries out to be filled in. [] >Another example, suppose I know that the name of Jim's wife is Mary >(maybe from a census record). I would enter the name of the wife as >"Mary unknown Ramaley". This helps when I am looking for additional >information about her because newspaper articles, etc., would usually >refer to her married name "Mary Ramaley." [] There's a slight difference in conventions there between UK and US: I don't know if it is legal or just what people do, but the practice of giving a woman (or is it only a widow?) both surnames is not common in UK, to the extent that most UK folk encountering the practice would assume it is American. (Obviously, it's actually useful for genealogical purposes, provided one realises that the last two names are both surnames.) -- J. P. Gilliver