Thanks Barbara, I'll add a tiny bit to Barbara's answer, on COPC % represents any number of letters, not just one, and you don't need to add one on the end, because the search does it automatically, it doesn't hurt to add it but it's not necessary. Mainly it's vowels you're interested in, but sometimes it's other letters too. So o%g will throw up odgers, ogers, oggers, odggers or theoretically ornamentagiphs or og, but if you find one of those you'll be lucky :) I'm having a 'let's tell everyone how clever Bill O'Reilly's programming is on the database search engine' time, especially when you add in the 'search surrounding parishes' option, and the 'People' search that searches everything on the database at once, baptisms, marriages etc. I'm really impressed with it. Peter -----Original Message----- From: cornish-gen-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:cornish-gen-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Barbara OConnor Sent: Saturday, 6 March 2010 4:43 PM To: cornish-gen@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [CORNISH-GEN] Search Symbols used in Peter's e-mails re ODGERS Peter is using % as a wild card - in his case, meaning O(any letter)G(any letter)R. To search for Edmonds, for example, using edm%nd would bring up a couple of different spellings, such as Edmond/Edmund. If you entered edm%ond%, you would get the variations already mentioned, and different endlings - s/son/etc. At a time when a lot of people were not well versed in reading and writing, the spelling of the a name often depended on how the clerical person thought it should be spelt. Cheers ------------------------------- Listmom: ybowers@gmail.com or CORNISH-GEN-admin@rootsweb.com Visit the OPC (Online Parish Clerk) web page for transcription information http://www.cornwall-opc.org/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to CORNISH-GEN-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message