In another case, in the California Death Records I found the birthplace for a person I was researching recorded as "Arkansas." I could not find her family in Arkansas census records for the year following her birth. Later I found that she was actually born in Arizona. Obviously someone recording the info in the Death Certificate or the Death Record used the wrong abbreviation (AR=Arkansas, AZ=Arizona).
My practice is to completely spell out all locations on entry, including the word "county," except that I use USA (e.g., Naperville Township, DuPage County, Illinois, USA). I then usually enter the location short name as the commonly used form (e.g., Naperville Twp, DuPage Co, IL). I would use the short name for most reports, but if I expected the report to go to non-US recipients, or to be viable in 100 years, I would use the full name.
Works for me.
John S. Adams Newbury Park, CA (soon to be Hermosa Beach, CA)
----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom Montgomery" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2005 8:03 AM
Subject: [LegacyUG] Use of abbreviations
My father-in-law (quite elderly) thought for years that NE was Nevada and was quite surprised when I told him Nebraska. MANY people assume many things so it is always best to spell it out, no abbreviations. An exception should be made for titles which can be construed as given names, such as Judge, Doctor, Duke, Commodore, etc. etc. Even this can be a problem as I have a distant cousin with the given names of "Hon Judge ____", which, of course, is Honorable Judge. Go figure....
Tom.......
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