Working on the basis of what Dave said, i.e. TWYS 'you are allowed to try to figure out what it must actually say provided that the final step in such a process is to take a final look and ask yourself "can I actually see what it does say" is advice which comes a little bit late for me. I recently had a scan which had a line running down the first column mostly through the forenames. For instance in the name 'William' the first letters 'Wi' were missing leaving 'lliam'. I could figure out that this ought to be 'William' but because I could not see the first two letters I TWYS, thus the first column had either * or _ inserted in the forenames down its length. Now of course I can see that I could have typed 'William' because the name was in the right alphabetical order and the 'lliam' bit was sufficient to tell me that the forename was William. I have used 'William' as an example but there were other forenames of course 'lice' (Alice?), 'E_ward' (Edward). However, rightly or wrongly I typed what I saw. It bothered me of course at the time I did the transcription, and bothers me even more now because I feel that I submitted a poor piece of work, perhaps unneccessarily and possibly because I followed the TWYS rule too slavishly. Any comments? I'm sorry if this is a bit longwinded. Sheila

----- Original Message ----- From: <SRILEY145@aol.com> To: <FREEBMD-DISCUSS-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 10:35 AM Subject: TWYS or not! > Working on the basis of what Dave said, i.e. TWYS 'you are allowed to try to > figure out what it must actually say provided that the final step in such a > process is to take a final look and ask yourself "can I actually see what it > does say" is advice which comes a little bit late for me. I recently had a scan > which had a line running down the first column mostly through the forenames. > For instance in the name 'William' the first letters 'Wi' were missing > leaving 'lliam'. I could figure out that this ought to be 'William' but because I > could not see the first two letters I TWYS, thus the first column had either * > or _ inserted in the forenames down its length. Now of course I can see that > I could have typed 'William' because the name was in the right alphabetical > order and the 'lliam' bit was sufficient to tell me that the forename was No you couldn't. Not unless there was at least a bit of the letter there to convince you. That's the trouble with advanced TWYS, it is bloody difficult to explain. It ISN'T sufficient to gain enough clues to convince you of what it must say. You must still be able to actually see it. What is permissible is using clues to direct you towards what to look for. How many times have you experienced a situation where a word appears unreadable, and utterly defeats you, but as soon as someone tells you what it says, you can read it perfectly. That is advanced TWYS, except that it is your detective work that tells you the answer, not another person.