On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 09:37:04 -0000 "Barbara Mallyon" <[email protected]> wrote: > Word Labourer was spelt in register as Laborer labor(er) is according to some the 'correct' English spelling and not a US variant. It is the spelling used by a certain Wm Shakespeare, so it seems it was the older spelling of the word that was used by whoever wrote up the Woodlands registers. I only have the fiche to 1917 so don't know if the spelling changed after that date. It was written with the 'u' in the St. Mary Registers after the mid 1870s but even then it depends on who wrote it, judging by the handwriting. I think that when doing 'pure' transcriptions of registers we should use the actual spelling whether or not it is conforms to our modern UK usage. However when it comes to entering data into the software we use it may be necessary to 'standardise' on one spelling of a word to __simplify__ searching*. Most software packages I have seen don't even handle things like aliases very well. Computers are not best suited to understanding spelling variants as they don't work the way our brains do but treat every variant as a unique form. Whereas we can regard (for example) Wythe, Wyeth or Wyethe as being the same name without any problem. *some search engines are better than others at this sort of thing. -- John Lewis Debian (Sid) with the GeneWeb genealogy package

John Lewis wrote: > it seems it ['laborer'] was the older spelling of the > word that was used by whoever wrote up the Woodlands > registers. To confirm what John has said, I am researching family lines in a lot of places other than Kingsclere as, I imagine, are other Listers. I can confirm that the spelling "laborer" occurs very frequently, and in some areas seems to be the standard spelling. Mike ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Answers - Got a question? Someone out there knows the answer. Try it now. http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/