Family Historian User Group

If I find an age in months (often on a census e.g. 7 months in 1861), I'll enter 'Sep 1860' as a birth date. It's still approx... could easily have been August, but if I check Approximate it shows the life dates as (1860?-), but the year is (almost) certain. Either with or without the (app) is misleading.

ID:2092

Good point Chris. This could also apply if you know relative's year of birth and have been told that birthday was 'near Aunt Sarah's' which you know. Maybe the answer is another qualifier, say 'about', which could be used if year is certain, but month and/or date isn't.
Of course then there's the opposite situation when you are certain of birthday - from family bible say, but not of the year. I guess the easiest way at present is to add qualifying notes.

Tom

I agree about the notes for the unusual cases, but what I was hoping for is that the record list and reports (where presumably something like the LifeDates function is used) could leave out the question mark if the date is marked as approximate but includes a month.

I tend to put an approximate date of birth as being the month before a baptism. So if I have a baptism in January 1870 I would put the date of bith as being approximately December 1869. However, the year of birth might be 1870, 1869, 1868 or even earlier so whereas I generally agree with the idea you are suggesting I think there would need to be a way of specifying that the year is known but the date is approximate rather than FH just assuming that because a month is given the year is definitely as stated.

I tend to use ranges if the month or day is uncertain.

Which all goes to prove you can't please all the people all the time... I guess the best compromise is another qualifier that means date uncertain but year probable... i.e. report as (for example) Jan 1876 (approx.), but not as (1876?-)

I think a nice comprise would be to include the month if the month is specified. So if just a approximate year was noted then '1895?' would be displayed. If the month was included then 'Dec 1895?' would be displayed. Basically add a question mark if approximate is noted in the date. So you could even have '14 Dec 1895?'.

Just to show another use of approximate/about dates, I used to use 'abt dec 1895' to specify the fourth quarter of 1895 in PAF. I don't use that now that FH has quarter dates.

My original point was that when the year but not the precise date is known, if the date is displayed as just a year, the approx can be misleading. But when it's displayed in full, the lack of approx is misleading.

You still want to be able to display for example 'Joe Bloggs(1800-1876)' in text schemes and reports, the question is, under what circumstances should a ? be included after the years.

Chris, did you still want this added to the wish list, if so what text do you want and heading.

I think so... even if it means a user option somewhere... what about 'Approximate date is not always approximate year' with a comment to the effect that (for example) 'Dec 1860 (app)' should read as '1860' not '1860?' in functions such as LifeDates and equivalent.

Would a solution be if FH allowed:

Dec (app) 1860

The point I was making is, how should it look when only the year is displayed, as in LifeDates, or reports such as '...son of Fred (1860-1899)'

Yes and the point I was making was that if you could specify which part of the date was approximate it could display correctly. e.g. Dec 1860 (app) would display 1860? whereas Dec (app)1860 would display 1860.

Sorry, misunderstood you... yes, I think you're right, that would cover it.

Posted to wish list as
Method of specifying how much of a date is approximate