I write out the words, husband of, wife of, etc. There are far to many people out there with the given name or surname 'Unk'. Barb On 2/24/2015 7:49 PM, BJ via wrote: > 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 >