Naming convention amp; unknown maiden names

Dagwood · Post by **Dagwood** » 05 Oct 2011 15:48

I wondered what others do with regard to style of entry re direct ancestor/descendants v more remote 'relatives' ,e.g. I put direct ancestors in capital letters, and blood relatives in lower case but with capital initials, and non-blood relatives in totally lower case. Is this the standard convention or do others have a better suggestion?
I also wonder how others enter spouse names where the maiden name is unknown I put for example Martha Dagwood Unknown but find many of my records have been entered in the alternative style of Martha Unknown Dagwood. before I go through changing one to the other what style do others use and why?
Dagwood [confused]

ID:5502

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 05 Oct 2011 16:12

I never use All Capitals when I enter names, I always use the 'normal' capitalised case. The problem I can see with your method is it if you share information with anyone they are going to end up with meaningless capitalisation as your relations will not be the same relationship to them.

If you want to show your relations differently I would have thought it better to use a text scheme or simply use the relationship to file root information.

For unknown maiden names I use the spouses surname in brackets, as it puts them all together in the records list as information I need to find answers for.

Dagwood · Post by **Dagwood** » 05 Oct 2011 16:45

Thank you Jane, I do like your bracketed spouse name suggestion. As you say they all end up together which of course having Unknown at the end does but nowhere near as neatly.
I suppose I might sound selfish here when I say I am not too worried about sharing info with anyone, and if I do probably will not worry too much if the realtionship is not the same. I omitted to mention that it was not only FH I am entering the info into but also Ancestry and of course that lacks the finesse of FH inasmuch as there is no Root nor any indication of relationship. In Ancestry I have found the use of capitals helpful when scanning down the list of persons especially when you get say 6 William Dagwoods but only one is a direct descendant or ancestor.
Could you perhaps elaborate on what you mean when you say 'better to use a text scheme'?
Many thanks
Dagwood

YouTube · Post by **Jane** » 05 Oct 2011 18:35

If you are doing a diagram, you can control the output to a great extent using a text scheme. So you could capitalise on a diagram just the Ancestors of the fileroot when you have entered them as lowercase and turned of the show surnames as Capitals in FH.

Dagwood · Post by **Dagwood** » 06 Oct 2011 08:16

I get it. Thanks for that Jane, your advice as helpful as ever.
Dagwood

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