I'll cross-post this to s.g.c to reassure Wes that some of us are still alive... J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: > The GENI thread made me think of this, but I thought I'd put it as a > separate thread. I'm writing as if for a guide for a beginner like I > think the GENI OP is, but thought it might provoke some interesting > discussions. > > Ideally near the start of creating your data - think very carefully > about the format in which you're going to record some things, such as > dates and places. To some extent, it will be determined by the software > you're using. > > Dates > ----- > If I'd been starting out now, I'd have used the ISO format - year, > month, day. It has several advantages: mainly, if there's anywhere where > it appears in plain text and things are sorted by it, then it sorts by > date. (Provided you put leading zeros in, such as 1960-04-23 rather than > 1960-4-23. I add the dashes for readability: 19600423 would sort as > well, but is less legible.) Another reason for using it is that it's > different from both the UK and US format, which forces anyone to stop > and think, rather than just assuming it is one or other. However, I'm > not saying you must use this format (for a start, I don't know if all g. > software allows it) - just give it some thought. We need to be careful here as the ISO standard not only covers date formats, it also mandates the Gregorian calendar with provision for extending it back beyond its starting date. This, however, is inadequate for our purposes as at not only at some point, which will vary from country to country, older dates need to be Julian but other cultures will have their own calendar. Not surprisingly, therefore, the format makes no provision for the dual format often used form January to March in the Julian period, e.g. 1645/6. A great deal of what you record is likely to be before the switch over date if you make any progress at all with your research. I tend to use what I suppose could be called the Unix calendar - the United Kingdom and her colonies but with the year starting on January 1st if only because most non-genealogical S/W handles it that way. ISO format still doesn't help anyone not familiar with it to work out which part is the month. 1960-04-23 is clear enough, 1960-04-01 is still ambiguous. My practice when writing up is to give months as letters, e.g. 23 Apr 1960 with leading zeros for the single digit days - but only when I remember :o . Having said that I have Informix, where I keep a lot of raw data and OOO Calc set to UK format. > (Another point is don't use two-digit years, but I think this becomes > obvious to any genealogist fairly soon.) Annoyingly both OOO & LibreOffice (at least up to 3.3) have the default UK format set to two digit years. > Decide (again, probably influenced by your software) how you're going to > indicate quarters: a lot of the available information (principally the > birth, marriage and death indices) only gives the information to the > nearest quarter. Personally I use something like "1960Q2", but whatever > works for you. What I personally _don't_ like is the practice - which > ancestry told me is common when I mentioned it to them as part of > another matter - of recording "Jan 1900" or "Mar 1900" when what is > meant is "Jan/Feb/Mar 1900"; it gives the impression that the event has > been pinned down to the month, when it hasn't. I'm only saying I don't > like it, not don't do it, however! > > Think how you're going to consider the fact that _registration_ of BMD > isn't when it happened, only when it was registered: also > baptism/christening isn't when the birth happened. There's no right > answer to this, just think about how (or even if at all) you're going to > indicate the possible discrepancy. The second part should be straightforward enough - you simply record what the event was. > Places > ------ > Again, if I were starting out again now, I'd have used the - not > intuitive - "country, country subdivision, town/village" (where > subdivision is a county for UK, a state for US, and so on). The reason > I'd have done this is down to the fact that the software I use can > produce lists of events sorted by place. I have most of my data as > "town/village, country subdivision, country", which means that the list > looks like > > Martlesham, Suffolk, England > birth of ... > New York, New York, USA > birth of ... > marriage of ... > New Zealand > death of ... > Ormskirk ... > > , whereas if I'd had country first, all the England places would have > been in the same part of the list, with the counties within that chunk, > and so on; it also means where I only knew the country, it wouldn't get > jammed in in an odd place. There's a problem here in that there are multiple schemes for dividing up the country. And I don't just mean boundary changes. At the same time a given place could belong to a parish, a township and a manor. I remember on one occasion helping someone on Genforums over an individual who gave his place of birth on a census as "Almondbury". In his baptismal record an abode wasn't given but his siblings had a quite precise location of "Scar fold" which was in Upperthong township; he'd given his parish of birth. Clearly "Almondbury" and "Upperthong" sort quite differently and Almondbury township is several miles from Upperthong geographically. This is multi-dimensional data and there's no easy way to deal with it. > Also, I store the fine detail, if I have it ("44, Clarges Street") in a > comment field: that way, at least all the events in the same town are > listed together. (However, if I'd been putting country first, it could > maybe have been left in the place field.) > > You may initially consider either not putting the country in, or only > putting it in where it isn't xxx (where xxx is where most of the family > you start with is). However, it's tedious to go back and add it later, > so I'd say it's probably worth doing from the start. > > I'm certainly not saying you should use this "backwards" format - only, > give some long thought to what format you _are_ going to use, preferably > before you start. If you're recording this in genealogical software there seems to be an assumption that we live in cities. I suspect genealogical S/W writers have simply taken over what seem to be US postal address schemas in which they are not alone as a good deal of on-line shops, even those in the UK, seem to do the same. In practice, therefore, I find myself having to use the city field for the township. > Another aspect of place to be considered, is are you going to use > placenames as they were recorded, or as they are now? There are (at > least) two aspects to this: the spelling of placenames changes, and what > county (or even country) they are in does too. The most common variation > for English people is that most of what we now think of as London is > recorded as Middlesex (with some Surrey and Kent), before dates in the > 18xx; there are also county boundary movements (Northumberland used to > extend south of the Tyne more than now), the brand new counties (Tyne > and Wear, Avon, Cleveland, ...), ones that disappeared (and reappeared > in the case of Rutland!), and so on. There is no right answer to this > question, it's just something you should think about; in my own case, > I've generally tried to use the same spelling and county for a > placename, so that all events in it are kept together - but I don't > think I've been completely consistent about whether to use the original > or present form. Ideally S/W should allow you to record the name exactly as found and to have a standard form so if, for instance the township is written Overthong or Overthwonge or whatever you should be able to record this but still be able to refer it to a standard record with the modern standard spelling of Upperthong. Incidentally, until fairly recently one lane in Upperthong had a signboard at one end which spelled it as Wickens Lane and another spelling it as Wickins Lane. > (At least part of the reason for keeping to one variant > is that the software I use lets me type a few letters then press F8, and > it brings up a list of places I've used before, so I like to keep the > total down. Also, when this list pops up, I see what I've used in the > past, and might realise that the place I'm entering is really one I've > already entered.) Gramps has places as a separate database table and at each point where a place is required there are icons to choose from the table or to enter a new place. It can also merge duplicates. > There are other things it's probably worth thinking about your strategy > before you start, too: at the moment I can think of names. In my own > case, where a family has changed the way they spell their surname, I've > recorded each individual as how s/he spelt it. What gets more difficult > is where an individual's name - forename or surname - is spelt > differently at different times. (If they were illiterate, they didn't > spell it at all: other people spelt it for them.) Again, there is no > "right" way to do this, just think about it. A good g. software will > allow you to store alternative names for a person - and let you find > them by either name. IMV good genealogical S/W would keep the name as spelled with the record where it was spelled, not just as a floating alternative name and allow you to have a standard name for the person with some sort of epithet to distinguish it from some other person of the same name, e.g William Goddard II, John Goddard of Scholes etc. -- Ian The Hotmail address is my spam-bin. Real mail address is iang at austonley org uk

In message <[email protected]>, Ian Goddard <[email protected]> writes: [dates] >We need to be careful here as the ISO standard not only covers date >formats, it also mandates the Gregorian calendar with provision for >extending it back beyond its starting date. This, however, is I suppose I shouldn't have said the ISO format, just year-month-date. [] >ISO format still doesn't help anyone not familiar with it to work out >which part is the month. 1960-04-23 is clear enough, 1960-04-01 is >still ambiguous. My practice when writing up is to give months as >letters, e.g. 23 Apr 1960 with leading zeros for the single digit days >- but only when I remember :o . Having said that I have Informix, Me too - well, I say 1960-4-23 or 1960-04-23, but if before the 13th (except on e. g. 7/7!), I say 1960-Apr-1. I agree it's still unclear to anyone unfamiliar with it: my main reason (as well as computer sorting reasons) for using it, in everyday life as well as genealogy, is that year-first (I _always_ use four-digit) is sufficiently unfamiliar to most people that I hope it makes them stop and check anyway. (If it's a short note where it isn't clear, I do use the month-as-letters form.) _Is_ the form yyyy-dd-mm actually in use anywhere? [] >> Places [] >There's a problem here in that there are multiple schemes for dividing >up the country. And I don't just mean boundary changes. At the same >time a given place could belong to a parish, a township and a manor. I [] >Upperthong geographically. This is multi-dimensional data and there's >no easy way to deal with it. Indeed. [] >If you're recording this in genealogical software there seems to be an >assumption that we live in cities. I suspect genealogical S/W writers >have simply taken over what seem to be US postal address schemas in >which they are not alone as a good deal of on-line shops, even those in >the UK, seem to do the same. In practice, therefore, I find myself >having to use the city field for the township. In the part you'd snipped, I think I referred to the field below country-subdivision as "village/town"; I certainly agree that the assumption (at least as far as titling the field goes) that we all live in cities is irritating. Of course, in genealogy, once you go back a century or two, a lot didn't even live in villages, though I suppose they came under the local village/parish/whatever for administrative purposes. [] >Ideally S/W should allow you to record the name exactly as found and to >have a standard form so if, for instance the township is written >Overthong or Overthwonge or whatever you should be able to record this >but still be able to refer it to a standard record with the modern >standard spelling of Upperthong. Incidentally, until fairly recently Agreed. [names] >IMV good genealogical S/W would keep the name as spelled with the >record where it was spelled, not just as a floating alternative name >and allow you to have a standard name for the person with some sort of >epithet to distinguish it from some other person of the same name, e.g >William Goddard II, John Goddard of Scholes etc. > Not totally unlike the placenames I suppose. Basically, this is all good discussion: I started it because the thread with GENI in the title made we think that someone was possibly about to start on the hobby, and I thought they (and anyone else in a similar position) would benefit from thinking hard, before they started, about what form they were going to store at least dates and placenames in, because some thought before starting is likely to save much time later. I hoped it would provoke debate as well, which it has, good; it's branched into discussion of what good g. software should offer in these respects, which is also good, as long as the original point isn't obscured too much. (I appeal to people to consider changing the thread title where appropriate.) -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)[email protected]+Sh0!:`)DNAf `Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.' Pablo Picasso, 1968