In message <[email protected]>, Dave Mayall <[email protected]> writes >On Wed, 19 Sep 2001 10:32:42 EDT, you wrote: > >>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?) > >No, but we are transcribing the index, not the original certificates > >One has to ask "does it have any significance" In the case of an >initial, it serves to indicate that this is an initial. > >"William G." means "G" is an initial >Could "William George." mean that there are other forenames following >George that have been omitted from the index? > >>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. > >We normalise District names by a lookup table. This doesn't involve >any character stripping (except for leading and trailing spaces). No >other fields are normalised. > >Yes we can get round this in code (we can get round all manner of odd >habits that transcribers have by adding a few lines of code), but it >is better if we can get things right to avoid having to insert such >code. This, along with your answer to my query, seems to beg a couple of further questions (-: [snip] >There is currently a backlog of over a thousand district aliases >awaiting entry into the table. Volunteers for this task are welcome. Emailed off-list. Philip Powell Looking north across the Derwent Valley and Northumberland to The Cheviot