Having suscribed to this list serve for only a few days, I am being very presumptious to be making suggestions, but there are some practices in use here which are causing me some problems and can lead to mistakes being repeated by many. Some of you may wish to add to this, but may I initiate it with the following suggestions: 1. When listing a person whose name could be interpreted as male or female, and there is no other accompanying information to clarify the gender, please indicate in parenthesis the gender, if known. For example "Pat Kornegay" could be male or female. If Pat married "George Hamilton Bishop", then I can figure it out. But if Pat married "Bobbie Brooks"...Pat could be male and Bobbie female, or vice versa. "Pat Kornegay (male) m. Bobbie Brooks" would eliminate us creating and perpetuating a mistaken gender. 2. If the first name is known but not the last, type the first name followed by some underlines: "Martha _______". Do not type "Martha???" This can be misinterpreted as uncertainty as to the first name being "Martha". If the last name is known, but not the first, type "______ Smith", if there is any chance a reader might wonder whether this was a first name or last. For example, "Mary Kornegay m. Patrick???". Did she marry a man whose first name was Patrick and last name unknown, or whose last name might have been Patrick, or what? "Mary m. _____ Patrick." is fairly clear that his last name was Patrick, first name unknown. 3. Avoid mentioning several people in one paragraph and then using the a pronoun such as "their, they, his, her". It can be unclear which of the people you are referring back to. For example: "I have found that John Jones married Christine Mayfield , daughter of James Mayfield and Mary Smith. Maxfield Parrish married her sister, Janette. They had two children, Glen and Sarah." In the above paragraph, can you see how one might be confused as to whether "They" refers to Maxfield and Janette or John and Christine? The initial subjects of the paragraph were John and Christine, but the most recent sentence was about Maxfield and Janette. Either intrepretation could be made. And who is "her"? Did Maxfield marry Christine's sister or Mary Smith's sister? Keep this potential ambiguity in mind when using pronouns. 4. Tag your subject matter (in the "subject" field) with something distinctive enough to help others recognize the specific area you are addressing in your post, rather than titling it too broadly. For example, Re: [KORNEGAY-L] Bibbs Co. AL is much more useful than: Re: [KORNEGAY-L] My branch