The problem that I had with using "Unknown" for missing names, especially used where people have a lot of children and the names really are unknown, or they don't want the names out in public, is that I ended up with 4 or 5 pages of "Unknown" people in the index when reports are made. It doesn't really matter whether one uses Unknown or N.N. (no name) or what ever in a report index I will still have pages and pages of whatever. This is why I leave mine blank, unless the program won't let me for whatever reason. I have had couples with up to 18 children either "Unknown" or "Living " etc. so I put in the parents notes that they have or had 18 children names unknown. I haven't had any trouble using Legacy IGI search, Rootsweb etc. with this method.
Carol
Susan Cullivan wrote:
When I first started Legacy a couple of months ago, I used [---?---] for any unknown Surname or Given name in my chart. I liked how it clearly showed what part of the person's name I did not yet know. (I am an optimist in I hope that someone on the internet may see my chart and fill in the so-called blanks for me!)
When I went to use the Legacy-IGI Search, however, this method prevented any reasonable matches from occurring. (It only listed people missing those same names I was hoping to find!) So upon the advice of this list, I replaced all my "[---?---]" with blank entries (no characters). This increased the odds I would find, for example, a Mary (with a surname) in the IGI list whose B/M/D dates and/or spouse matched my entry of a Mary without surname. I did actually find the given name of a first husband with this method!
The problem with this, however, is I wasted a lot of time doing the IGI search on people who are likely to be living, or those who are not likely to be found in the IGI list. (I am not a strong user of tags, unfortunately.) So I decided that I would use "[---?---]" for any first or last names or people born after about 1930 who gave incomplete answers to previous family historians, but are in the tree. I am also starting to use it for unknown children who make up the difference in the census count in 1900 and 1910 between "children born" and "children now living" for whom I have not found records or names.
I would like an answer from Legacy Support, however, to this question: will using a private note such as [[wife of Asa Jones]] in place of the unknown surname hinder a search using the IGI tool, as I describe above? Is there a way Legacy can ignore ASCII characters like dashes, underlines, and question marks in its IGI search tool?
I have a copy of the textbook "Professional Genealogy - A Manual for Researchers, Writers, Editors, Lecturers, and Librarians", edited by Elizabeth Shown Mills (c) 2001 that states "Unknown maiden names may be indicated by substituting editorial brackets (square brackets) for the parentheses and filling those brackets with a single dash or (more clearly) a question mark amid dashes--e.g., Mary [---] Smith or Mary [--?--] Smith."
Susan Daily
p.s. Bert - I think if I received a copy of a tree with "NN" - I would wonder why the compiler wouldn't share the full name of the individual found, since they obviously knew the initials! But that could just be me!
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 11:38:31 EST, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I like that idea, Dave. Serves several purposes handily.
On this list there are proponents of [--?--] instead of Unknown or a blank space. Would anyone care to comment on the pros and cons of Dave's method vs. [--?--] I am about to undo all my [--?--]'s and adopt Dave's underlines. -- Alice
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