On 6/10/2015 11:05 AM, Joe LaPointe via wrote: > In the 1900 - 1940 U.S> Census, I have the following sentence for the > principles: > > [P] <|and [PO]> appeared on the 19xx Federal Census living in < [L3],>< > [L7]><, [M1]>. > > The problem I'm running into is when a couple has the same sentence > repeated for 2 - 3 census without any other events between the census > years. As an example, I get the following: > > [P] <|and [PO]> appeared on the 1910 Federal Census living in < [L3],>< > [L7]><, [M1]>. > [P] <|and [PO]> appeared on the 1920 Federal Census living in < [L3],>< > [L7]><, [M1]>. > [P] <|and [PO]> appeared on the 1930 Federal Census living in < [L3],>< > [L7]><, [M1]>. > > This does not read very well. I have this problem with 12 couples. Any > suggestions as to how I can fix this problem so the narrative is not so > repetitive? I would like an approach that does not require editing > custom census tags for each of the 12 couples. > Joe, I know you said you don't want to edit the Sentences locally, but that's exactly what I do. I've found I prefer to use first names mainly, but part of that depends on how you arrange the output of the census tags into paragraphs, and what other tags, if any, separate them. I generally make each census tag a separate paragraph for the principals. That's because I include the names of other members of the household, and information about property owned or family members in nearby households, in the Principals' output so the output of the census tag is often several sentences long. I use the [PF] variable for the current principal. For the first census in which the spouse appears with the current principal, I use [P], and in later censuses I use [PF]. However, if the family moved to a new city since the prior census I generally add a Moved tag, as a new paragraph. If the census tag follows that I do not make it a new paragraph, and change the Sentence to "They appeared..." One way to improve the repetitive output might be to change the sentences to "[P] <and [POF]> appeared..." or "[PF]<and [POF] appeared..." The former would result in the output starting with "He" if it is not a new paragraph, which may well be confusing depending on what precedes this tag. Terry Reigel