Well, Gents, that has been a most entertaining exchange for me. Thanks for your attention. I'll make just a couple of final remarks and leave the last word to you others, if you will. Curiously my training focused on concepts like the axiomatic approach, logical deduction, etc., etc. By contrast my genealogy recording is disgracefully pragmatic. I view the accumulated data for a person or family as a whole, for example the complete set of available census ages. Then, in the absence of better data, I am content to pick a year of birth that best fits - no need for explicit justification. Any individual age discrepancies are highly visible and need no comment - we all know these things happen. (Though occasionally I might record a note to the effect that, for example, it could be an enumerator's TE.) In similar vein, I would never dream of trying to create citations for every variant of a birthplace. A "best guess" from the totality of reports (ignoring apparent errors) is good enough for me. I don't lose any sleep over the prospect that any of these details can be off the mark and welcome any later correction by better data. Neither am I concerned about name spelling variants. It is good enough to *record* the name forms shown for each event. How someone's name is spelled (pre-20th century) has everything to do with the scribe and usually little to do with the person/family. For that reason (horror of horrors) I hardly ever give more weight to a registration or baptismal name form than to others. And, to top it all (sacrilege!), I normalise headline given names (and often family names, where they dither or mutate). That way, I get a beautifully integrated records list view sorted by surname, first given and birth date/year. Which means I can actually find people easily and spot the all-too-frequent potential duplicates. Happy New Year. Paul

On 26 December 2015 at 04:00, Paul via <family-historian-users@rootsweb.com> wrote: > ... > How someone's name is spelled (pre-20th century) has everything to do with > the scribe and usually little to do with the person/family. ... > > And, to top it all (sacrilege!), I normalise headline given names (and > often > family names, where they dither or mutate). > > That way, I get a beautifully integrated records list view sorted by > surname, first given and birth date/year. > ... > Me too, Paul - my classic case is the "Healow" family of Barthomley in the 1700s, where the PRs use (from memory) "Healoh" "Healah", etc, indiscriminately. Originally I recorded each person under their baptised name - but then I got "William Healah" before "Thomas Healow" in the alphabetical list, which is most off-putting and inefficient. Eventually I settled on "Healow" as the most common variant, used that in their names, and recorded the actual spelling in the Source-Record and the notes to the Baptism event. My justification is that the different spellings tell me about the parish clerks of Barthomley, not about the Healows. There are times, however, when I find it useful to record variants as Alias names - "Healow" actually transitions into "Heler", so at some point I'll need aliases to show the gradual change. Also, recording "Spode" with an alias of "Spord" reminds me to search on both variants. Adrian

That's a very good explanation of what I do too Paul. I've followed this thread with interest and was starting to think I might be missing out a lot of necessary citations & sources. I think, if you were doing very important research into something not yet proven, or were doing research on a professional basis, then all the extra detail is most certainly necessary. But for general purposes, your descendants are only going to want to know where you got the salient information from, not how many different ways you compared & checked it before arriving at your conclusion. Be as accurate as you can and do check your information against more than one source if possible. I don't think citing/recording/listing every little nuance is going to make much difference in the long run. Everyone has their own way of doing things & that's great. It makes for some very interesting discussion and a lot of shared knowledge. The trick is to select what you really need and anything else which would make your tree more accurate and easily understandable for your descendants. The FH programme is capable of doing much more than most of us need it to. You are not obliged to use it all. Having used the older versions of Family Tree Maker for many years, changing to FH has been a steep learning curve for me & I'm still getting to grips with it. I've discovered that keeping it simple is a much easier way to go - for me. It means I can spot irregularities much more easily and there are not too many things to adjust as a result. Regards & a very happy New Year to you all. Lesley Baxendale BTW - how do you record a date source or citation if you were actually there yourself at the event? In the past, I've put something like 'personally known fact' against it, but I don't think that's good enough really. On 26/12/2015 04:00, Paul via wrote: > Well, Gents, that has been a most entertaining exchange for me. Thanks for > your attention. > > I'll make just a couple of final remarks and leave the last word to you > others, if you will. > > Curiously my training focused on concepts like the axiomatic approach, > logical deduction, etc., etc. > > By contrast my genealogy recording is disgracefully pragmatic. > > I view the accumulated data for a person or family as a whole, for example > the complete set of available census ages. > > Then, in the absence of better data, I am content to pick a year of birth > that best fits - no need for explicit justification. > > Any individual age discrepancies are highly visible and need no comment - we > all know these things happen. > > (Though occasionally I might record a note to the effect that, for example, > it could be an enumerator's TE.) > > In similar vein, I would never dream of trying to create citations for every > variant of a birthplace. > > A "best guess" from the totality of reports (ignoring apparent errors) is > good enough for me. > > I don't lose any sleep over the prospect that any of these details can be > off the mark and welcome any later correction by better data. > > Neither am I concerned about name spelling variants. It is good enough to > *record* the name forms shown for each event. > > How someone's name is spelled (pre-20th century) has everything to do with > the scribe and usually little to do with the person/family. > > For that reason (horror of horrors) I hardly ever give more weight to a > registration or baptismal name form than to others. > > And, to top it all (sacrilege!), I normalise headline given names (and often > family names, where they dither or mutate). > > That way, I get a beautifully integrated records list view sorted by > surname, first given and birth date/year. > > Which means I can actually find people easily and spot the all-too-frequent > potential duplicates. > > Happy New Year. > > Paul > > > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to FAMILY-HISTORIAN-USERS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >