>> How's the best way to handle entering multiple surname spelling >> variations in my genealogy program... when the person used different >> ones or the records show different ones? >> >> jsents@stny.rr.com (John Sents) > >Varying with the individual I use the spelling that seems to be the >one they most commonly used or maybe as their birth/baptism was >entered (judgement call). Then many genealogical pprograms have an >'also known as' field (in legacy the AKA field opens the dialog as >'Alternate name spellings') where I enter the variants. > >"Mick Gurling" <No.Spam.mickg@toto.com> Mick, thanks for your reply.... your response came closest to answering my intended question. Guess I could've made it clearer ( but side benefit is that the other responders gave me some good tips on how to decide what variation to use, if I want to pick only one). I didn't think of using the AKA feature like you suggested. DUH! But this leads me to another question/problem: When I 'publish' my data on, say, RootsWeb World Connect, will the SEARCH function look at the alternate spellings coded as AKAs? (I don't think so, but I'm not sure). Back to my original question, what I was wondering is: if there is some accepted 'scheme' for entering the applicable Surname vatiations, such as: SENTS/Sentz/Zentz or SENTS (Sentz Zentz)? This way, someone doing a SEARCH on any one of the variations gets my data. jsents@stny.rr.com (John Sents)