J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: > [] >> Births Jun 1891 >> Martin James Elias Gravesend 2a 538 > What does the house think (about the suggestion we try to stop using > just one month to indicate a quarter)? > > (And yes, I do know that there's further ambiguity in that a BMD may be > registered in the following quarter. I feel my preferred option of > 1891Q2 makes that possibility very slightly more obvious, though I'm not > sure why I feel that.) This member of the house agrees. Depending on circumstances I'll use the Q2 1891 style in a text account or, using Gramps, set the date format to range and enter the beginning and terminal dates of the range. I'm not so concerned with confusing newcomers, it's just that using a single month has a two thirds chance of being wrong even if it's what the official lists say. -- Ian The Hotmail address is my spam-bin. Real mail address is iang at austonley org uk

On Mon, 19 Aug 2013 15:42:44 +0100, Ian Goddard <goddai01@hotmail.co.uk> wrote: >J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: >> [] >>> Births Jun 1891 >>> Martin James Elias Gravesend 2a 538 >> What does the house think (about the suggestion we try to stop using >> just one month to indicate a quarter)? >> >> (And yes, I do know that there's further ambiguity in that a BMD may be >> registered in the following quarter. I feel my preferred option of >> 1891Q2 makes that possibility very slightly more obvious, though I'm not >> sure why I feel that.) > >This member of the house agrees. Depending on circumstances I'll use >the Q2 1891 style in a text account or, using Gramps, set the date >format to range and enter the beginning and terminal dates of the range. > >I'm not so concerned with confusing newcomers, it's just that using a >single month has a two thirds chance of being wrong even if it's what >the official lists say. > Using the quarter of registration to indicate the birthdate only drops the potential error from c.66% to c.47% (assuming for simple convenience an even distribution across the time available for registration).