It certainly does help. Many thanks BJ for taking the time to type this out for me. Much appreciated. Allie -----Original Message----- From: BJ via Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2015 8:49 PM To: ftm-tech@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [FTM-TECH] Searching for blank surnames Thanks for asking. My annotations are pretty much the same as Ian's. Basically they are * H/ - Husband of * W/ - Wife of * M/ - Mother of * F/ - Father of * S/ - Son of * D/ - Daughter of I use the notation along with the name of the closest known relative. Examples are * John (H/ Mary Archer) __________ Mary Archer's name is known. Archer is her maiden name. I know John's given name but not his surname so I enter 10 underscores for the surname. This gives me an index listing of __________, John (H/ Mary Archer) Because the underscores sort before any alphabetic characters, the name will be listed before anyone with a name beginning with "A". * Marie (W/ Sam Small) __________ Sam Small's wife's name is Marie but I don't know her maiden name. Again this sorts toward the beginning of the Index due to the surname being underscores. If you use different numbers of underscores, it can affect the sorting and display i.e. 9 underscores will sort before 10 underscores. 11 underscores will sort after 10 underscores. * __________ (M/ Jane Austin) __________ I occasionally use this for parents when I find a census which indicates the birth state of the mother or father. I don't know the given name nor the maiden name of the mother. Obviously for the father I would assume his surname to be the same as Jane' maiden name, Austin. * __________ (S/ James Smith) Smith * __________ (D/ James Smith) Smith Hope this helps. BJ On 2/24/2015 10:30 AM, Allie Warnier-Susko wrote: > BJ, what do all the H/, M/, etc., annotations stand for? Would you > mind showing examples of them and the ( ). Thank you. > Allie > > -----Original Message----- From: BJ via > Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2015 1:22 AM > To: ftm-tech@rootsweb.com > Subject: Re: [FTM-TECH] Searching for blank surnames > > When I wrote that I used 10 underscores for the unknown part of the > name, I was addressing a question about the surname. I'm very happy > with all of the responses providing alternatives. I'm particularly > pleased that Ian wrote about his method. I actually use the same method > except, I use ( ) to enclose the relative's name. Like Ian I find the > use of the H/, M/, S/, D/ and W/ annotations extremely helpful when I am > reviewing the index as they provide additional information which I can > use to identify particular family that I may want to concentrate my > current research on. > > Thanks to everyone who contributed their ideas as that is the beauty of > this list, Users helping Users. > > BJ > > On 2/23/2015 10:30 PM, Ian Marr via wrote: >> Like BJ and others, I use 10 underscore characters when a name is not >> known. >> Because I may have a number of people with the same name, or a number of >> "Mary Unknowns", I also include additional information in the name, >> such as >> "Wife of", "Husband of", "son of" etc; pointing back to someone who >> can be >> uniquely identifed. >> >> Examples: >> Mary 'W/John Ellis' __________ >> Peter 'H/Mary Smith' __________ >> David 'S/Jane Doe' __________ >> __________ 'S/Stephen' Brown >> >> Using the single quote seems to work fine, without messing up other >> indexes, >> etc. In 2014 (and perhaps other versions) this will generate a warning >> about special characters being included in a name, but you can ignore >> that. > ********************************** > List information page > http://lists.rootsweb.com/index/other/Software/FTM-TECH.html > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > FTM-TECH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message > ********************************** List information page http://lists.rootsweb.com/index/other/Software/FTM-TECH.html ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to FTM-TECH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message