Charlene Charette wrote: > > Sorry for the cross-post. I've never been sure exactly what is the > difference in these two groups and to which one I should post. > > In citing locations is there a "right" way? I've seen good arguments > for: > > state, county, city > city, county, state > > Does it really matter as long as it's consistent? > Yeah, actually. (g) I agree with Dave and Carole about order (small to large). I suspect the majority of pre-WIN9x genealogists DO prefer small to large, because (1) most of those people did genealogy before computers, and small-to-large was how it was done in pencil and paper; (2)in pre-WIN9x environments, one did not have an unlimited amt of space for a locale and the program simply chopped off excess letters. This left the user with a Country, a province, and maybe part of a town-name. That's MUCH more difficult to track down than town-name, province, part of a countryname. (use up country-name with "Austrio-Hungarian Empire" and see what's left for the Parish name) And the reason it matters from your database to mine or Dave's or Carole's is -- if your placenames go large-to-small and ours go small-to-large, when we exchange data, both ends will have to do clean-up, and cleanup of possibly truncated information. (I've seen locales entered as "St. Joseph's Lying-In Hospital, corner of 7th and Syracuse, now known as Veteran's Memorial Hospital, Providence, Westmoreland twp, Wissahocking co., Mississippi, United States." Which is WAAAY more information than is needed to answer "where was he born?")(g) Yeah: I made up the address, but not the concept. I agree that when citing most documents in sources, one DOES go from large to small (Fifteenth Census of the US, Virginia, Henrico county, Richmond City, Fifth Ward) but that used to all go into text format in a "notes" or "facts" section which HAD enough space for it all. Cheryl