In message <[email protected]>, Bill Webster via <[email protected]> writes: >Great topic John. But first, Roy, what is the "Note square"? [Do you mean Thanks; glad I asked, as it's interesting that others have also pondered it! >this?] If so, do these have special signification? And where do you put >it, in a note or in the Date column? I think Roy just meant the (almost) square in which an N appears when you make a note - in other words, the event note. > >I use bef, abt or aft quite a lot, for the reasons raised, because you know (I'd forgotten AFT in the original question, but obviously the same applies there.) I think these days I tend not even to enter things like birth or death if I don't know them: my database is for me, and I can make the deductions. But I think I'm with the person who said that he puts in as precise as the data source is dated, and this only confuses those new to genealogy, not those who've been doing it a while. >one event but can't find the other. But I have always put just the year, as >in bef 1855. Now you have got me wondering if I should be more precise, as >in aft ddmmyyyy (in the non-American fashion). (No, the American fashion is mmddyy[yy], which has always struck me as strange, at least when using numbers only. I use ddmmyyyy in BK - set to _display_ as dd mmm yyyy - because I started that way; in everyday life, I use the ISO format [also used in some parts of the world] yyyymmdd, and would in BK if I'd been using it when I started.) > >Which are the prefixes recognised by Gedcom? And does BK follow suit? And >do they need to be in CAPS? I seem to reflect the implicit imprecision by Good questions! >putting them in lower case, as above. > >By the same token, when entering a wife, my practice is to enter her by her >family/maiden name, the name she was born with, in CAPS, but if I don't know >that name I enter her with her married/husband's name in Lower Case, again >to imply that it is not quite the full information. If I don't know, I enter her surname as ?. > >I am at present dealing with a case in point where I can't find this >woman's birth/baptism but there are 5 different other sources: shipping, >daughter's birth, husband's death, remarriage and death. From ages given in >these, she was born anytime from 1835 to 1842. I reckon the first three are >the most reliable because she was the informant but even these vary a lot. >Do I average them or put bef or aft? There is no right answer, I think. An ideal candidate for BK's "between" facility, I'd say (and some notes). [] -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)[email protected]+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Listen, three-eyes, don't you try to out-wierd me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal. (Zaphod Beeblebrox in the link episode)