* Places and Addresses

[rodit]

I know that this topic has been brought up before in Forums (Fora?) and the Knowledge Base. However, when entering an address in the Address line, does protocol tell one to enter '8, Smith Street' or '8 Smith Street'. The presence or lack of the comma designates whether the data goes to Part 1, 2 or 3 in the List of Addresses. There are similar columns in the Place List, although it would seem that there would only be 2 parts to a place - town and county, or does one enter Country as Part 3?
I am asking this as I am about to start cleaning up and standardising my Tree. Similarly, is a church 'St. Michael' or 'St. Michael's'? ( I now know that this is also in the Address line).
Thanks
Roger

ID:6394

[gerrynuk]

As far as I know there is no protocol - just do what is best for you. Personally I can never understand why there is a comma between the house number and the street name.

As to church names I put 'St Michael' even though the building will normally called 'St Michael's Church'. For me this is more logical and shorter!

[brian1950]

Like Jerry I omit the comma: therefore for me it's '8 Smith St'.

However, I have had to be careful with church names. In correspondence from relatives mention has been made by more than one person to 'St Mary's'. In their area there are two 'St Mary's': 'St Mary's Church' and 'St Mary the Virgin Church'.

The assumption might possibly be made that they are referring to 'St Mary's Church'. They weren't, they meant 'St Mary the Virgin Church' as 'St Mary's' was quicker to write!

When I tackled them about this, they said 'Does it really matter?!'

[confused]

Brian

[tatewise]

I would advise including Country as a 3rd Place Part for several reasons.
Many Places have similar names all over the world, so it is good to be specific about which Town and County applies.
When using the FH V5 Plugins Map Life Facts/Events or just Google Maps the Country helps plot the correct Place.

It is largely a matter of taste how to format the Address field.
I use St.Michael's Church and Co.Durham with no space after the dot.
I have NOT been putting a comma between number and street, but may change that now FH V5 supports Address Parts similar to Place Parts, as it would allow Part Columns to be sorted by Street name.

The most important thing is to have a consistent strategy.
I would advise having a defined set of Place Part and Address Part columns.
e.g.
Place: Town, County, Country
Address: Building Name, Building Number, Street, District/Village, Postcode

[gerrynuk]

brian1950 said:
...
However, I have had to be careful with church names. In correspondence from relatives mention has been made by more than one person to 'St Mary's'. In their area there are two 'St Mary's': 'St Mary's Church' and 'St Mary the Virgin Church'.

...

I usually put the full name if I can find out what it is: St Mary Magdalen or St Mary the Virgin; St Nicholas of Myra etc etc. This should avoid any confusion.

[AnneEast]

Notice that all the examples people use for church names omit the full stop after the Saint ..... St Mary.

I believe that if the abbreviation has the last letter of the word it does not require a full stop. (me = pedant!!)

However a more important reason I have found (with a huge database of parish records) is that the file does not sort properly if some saints have a . and other do not!!!

Anne

[johnmorrisoniom]

As Mike has said, everyone has a personal preference. The important thing is to be consistant.

[rodit]

Thanks for the replies.
I have settled on no commas in the street number, but may stick to St. for churches as I was taught (back in the day!) that you put a full-stop after an abbreviation - St. and Rd.
I am also rather proud of myself that I have managed to adjust the Fact Set Templates to include the address.

Thanks again

Roger

[AdrianBruce]

For what it's worth, I decided to standardise on 'Street' and 'Road' in full.

If I wrote 'St.' (which is grammatically the correct abbreviation for Street), then I found I had templates that terminated in the address and these came up with 'High St..' at the end of the templated sentence - i.e. my full-stop from 'St.' and the terminal full-stop. On the other hand, missing out the full-stop from the 'St' gives grammatically incorrect sentences when the address is in the middle of the sentence.

While I do stick the correct full-stop in to abbreviate 'Saint' to 'St.', I confess myself to be inconsistent over whether it's 'St. Matthew' or 'St. Matthew's'. Usually I prefer the possessive simply because that's the way I talk, e.g. 'She was baptised at St. Matthew's, Haslington.' I don't say 'She was baptised at St. Matthew, Haslington.' (Clearly the possessive is there because the word 'Church' should be there). However, in some cases, the possessive simply doesn't work for some reason - e.g. 'She was baptised at St. John the Baptist, Crewe.' works but 'She was baptised at St. John the Baptist's, Crewe.' seems clunky. Well, to me it does, and I'm reading it!

And the other thing is - what about a multiple dedication? The Church of St. Mary & St. Nicholas? Is that 'SS. Mary & Nicholas' or 'St. Mary & St. Nicholas'? For clarity I thought 'St. ... & St. ...' as I'm not sure everyone knows the 'SS' abbreviation. Which sounds like a steam-ship now I look at it.

[brian1950]

The irregular use of the possessive, commonly called 'greengrocer's apostrophe' drives me mad!

Reading the national press over the past year or so there are plenty of examples of authorities up and down the country resigning streets and roads and omitting the apostorphe for no good reason, e.g. St Paul's Road (alongside to St Paul's Church) in my area is now St Pauls Road.

When tackled the reason given (or lazy excuse) is that people are 'confused'.

[confused]

Even the national bookshop chain, Waterstone's, founded by Tim Waterstone has now been rebranded as Waterstones... Waterstone's no longer 'practical' they say.

If Sainsbury’s and McDonald’s can get it correct, then why can’t Waterstone’s?

I better not go on... it's not good for my blood pressure.

Brian