I understand Dave Mayall's concern about conformity - like any group of talented individuals I know we would be an undisciplined lot if left to our own devices ;o) In this instance I agree with the logic expressed below by Richard. Where punctuation is clearly part of the fields - e.g hyphens in double barelled surnames, apostrophes in Irish surnames, or apostrophes, commas or periods in abbreviated forms of district names such as " scarbro' " or " Newport, M. " it seems absolutely right/natural to use the "Type what you see" direction. However where the symbols are separators - commas after surnames, period between forename and age, periods preceeding the district field, and the period following the volume field, it seems an unnecessary complication to add punctuation - and more likely to add work and errors than to minimise them. I find it hard to see understand why the official guidance is to type the period after the forename when we specifically do NOT type the period after the volume number. I note by the way that notwithstanding how they may have been transcribed the period is not actually displayed on any death records I've retrieved to date from FREEBMD (and I've tried to look at a pretty wide sample of those that havebeen loaded to date) - so I assume they were either not typed, or stripped off in the loading or retrieval stage. Val Val ----- Original Message ----- From: <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2001 3:32 PM Subject: Period after Forename > Hello, > Okay, I'll add my thoughts (again). > No, I don't believe the period should be there, except, possibly, for > initials. > It slows down transcription and isn't correct anyway. (Do you think your > ancestors-- those who could write-- signed their name with a period after the > first name?) > That said, the entire point (no pun intended) would be mooted if David, or > one of the programmers, would add two or three lines of code to normalize > forenames as is already done with first names and district names. The > periods would be stripped out during the match logic. > Another point-- there's that word again-- on this matter is one I have also > raised in the past. For those syndicates which are double-entering names (as > I believe they SHOULD be doing, but that's another discussion), if one > transcriber enters a forename with a period and another transcribes without, > that counts as a 'no match.' > David, respectfully, I disagree to some extent with your statement that we > shouldn't have syndicates making their own rules. It is far more important > that, WITHIN THE SYNDICATE, everyone is following the same rules. > > Now, on another matter. Some weeks ago I sent a note asking that entries for > London C and London C. be treated as equivalent. I never received a direct > answer, but judging from the fact that they are still treated as different as > of the current update I gather the answer was 'NO!" > This leads to two further questions > 1) Why aren't they treated as aliases of one another? > 2) What is the proper forum for making such a request? I have several more. > Anyone who wants to see a few should call up marriages, first quarter, 1867, > surname JONES. You'll see several instances where the district names are > obviously the same but are not treated as such. > > Regards, > Rick Elliott > > > > ============================== > Ancestry.com Genealogical Databases > http://www.ancestry.com/rd/rwlist2.asp > Search over 2500 databases with one easy query! > >