Richard, I was going to ask a question about 6(aj) as well. My impression is that it has been rewritten recently. One of my transcribers has just misunderstood it and thought he had to put in the surname from the line above. the scan is 1948B1-H-0071 Until recently I was sure that it said you had to put a ? in if a mother or spouse surname field had a long dash, just as you use ? for volume if there is no volume shown in a handwritten addition. It still has the old link to the UCF characters in the new text, but of course a dash is not a UCF character. Checking my outgoing emails I sent one to that effect to a transcriber as recently as 20th March this year, and copied in the URL for the link, so I must have looked at it then. If items in TKB are changed, it would be very helpful if this list is advised at the same time. Jeff ----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard Oliver" <richol@arrakis.es> To: <freebmd-syndicates@rootsweb.com> Sent: Sunday, April 04, 2010 8:55 PM Subject: Empty field in Mother's Maiden Surname > One of my transcribers has queried how to handle a handwritten 'extra' > entry that has a long dash in place of the Mother's Maiden Surname; the > scan reference is 1938B3-H-0424. > > I have advised him to use a ? mark as being the proper UCF symbol for a > Field with no content. He has hit back with an item from the > Transcriber's Knowledge Base, copied hereunder: > > _______________________ > 6 (aj) I have an entry in which the Mother's name is just a long dash. > How do I transcribe it? > Transcribe it as a dash (see details of UCF characters). The same applies > to other fields but not to the dash in the Surname field of typeset pages > which means "repeat the above Surname"; for these you repeat the Surname. > > _______________________ > > I have told him that the TKB is wrong in this particular case, and needs > correcting. The only field where a dash means "repeat the above Surname" > is the first field of any record, that is, the Surname of the person whose > BMD record it is. I believe there is no such UCF character as a "dash", > only an underscore meaning "single unreadable character". Incidentally, > since this was a Late Registration filed in Sep 1942, I have checked scan > 1942B3-H-0086 for the typed entry for this record, and the dash is duly > typewritten in the MMS column. > > Richard Oliver > Madrid, Spain > richol@arrakis.es > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > FREEBMD-SYNDICATES-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' > without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >