>John Sents wrote: > > > > 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? > >I use TMG and record all variations that I find with the source of >the variation. The variations how in the pick list so if I come >across the variation I can find the person. > >bob gillis <rpgillis@bellatlantic.net> Bob, 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)