Family Historian User Group

There doesn't seem to be a standard fact type for an award such as MBE.

What do you use?

Is this a case for a custom fact, I'm not worried about compatibility.

Yes, I use a custom fact for MBE. It is an event, so it is specific to MBE because it can't take a value. However I later had to create a couple of other events for different awards, so with hindsight it might have been better to use an attribute so that the name of the award could be entered as the value. I don't have many instances of any of them though, so it doesn't really matter much.

Why not use the standard Title Attribute as that is what it is for, allows a value (the Title), plus Date, Place awarded, etc?
Does not really matter whether the title awarded is Sir, Lord, Earl, Duchess, MBE, OBE, etc...

GEDCOM says: The title given to or used by a person, especially of royalty or other noble class within a locality.

Thanks Mike & Lorna

I had presumed title for Mr, Lord, Sir, etc. I had not considered using it for a suffix but it makes sense so will use it.

But what if they received the Nobel Peace prize? Title doesn't seem to work well for that, to me

Likewise Olympic gold medals! There are many kinds of award that do not actually involve a title.

Also 'war medals' that are catered for in fhugdownloads:contents:military_history_fact_set_mark_2|> Fact Set ~ Military History with Gallantry Medal and Military Medal custom attributes.

So perhaps a Civil Award custom attribute would handle athletics medals (Olympic, European, Cup Winners), and Nobel Peace prize, etc.

I think I've said before that I have two attributes for "medals":
- Awarded
- Issued with

The difference is fairly subtle, possibly even pedantic, but it's one of those differences that I can't un-learn. In the official MoD terminology, Gallantry Medals are awarded and Campaign Medals are issued. These are the two sentences:

<para>{individual} was awarded the <{value}>< {date}>< {place}>.
<para>{individual} was issued with the <{value}>< {date}>< {place}>.

Looking at them, it would appear that I could use the "Awarded" attribute for MBE, Nobel Prize, Fields Medal, etc.

The strict terminology is that someone is appointed MBE (OBE, etc)...

Arthur

MBE OBE etc are Titles, as they entitle you to put those very important letters after your name. So I would use the Title attribute in those cases.

arthurk wrote:The strict terminology is that someone is appointed MBE ...

Oh great - now I'll have to have a 3rd fact type unless I can unlearn this!

I've devised an all-purpose fact - "Honours". Two caveats, though: (a) I rarely do narrative reports, so I don't have too much of a problem with getting the verb right; (b) I created it while using RootsMagic, and haven't had time yet to make sure it works properly in FH.

(a) might be solved by including the verb as part of the value, but I'm not expert enough yet to know whether it's possible to do this so that it is capitalised in a summary report ("Appointed MBE") but not in a narrative ("She was appointed MBE...").

Arthur

I cannot think of an easy way to make the verb change from capitalised to lower case, not even by using functions.

The only possibility would be test every possible case such as:
{=TextIf( FactValue(%FACT%)="Appointed MBE", "appointed MBE", TextIf( FactValue(%FACT%)="Appointed OBE", "appointed OBE", FactValue(%FACT%) ))}
but an extra TextIf(...) clause would need to be added for new Honour.

tatewise wrote:I cannot think of an easy way to make the verb change from capitalised to lower case, not even by using functions.

I've discovered just 5 people with some kind of civil honours or award out of nearly 2700 individuals in my database, so for me, in view of the complexity of the capitalisation, it would almost certainly be easiest to get the value looking right in a summary report (possibly just "MBE" etc, rather than "Appointed MBE"), and then override the sentence where necessary in a narrative.

With so few instances, I felt a single all-purpose fact would work for me, but if you have more, then maybe a greater variety would be appropriate, in which case you might need less tweaking of the sentences.

Arthur