* Changing wording in Facts

[martynguy]

On creating reports etc, I note that FH makes sentences around the basic facts. Sometimes these do not read as correct grammar etc. How do you change that. My example is that of my grandfather - under Occupation I have put Secretary to the Head of Control Commission, date 1945, place Germany. On a report that ends up as 'In 1945 he was a Secretary to the Head of Control Commission in Germany.' I would like it to be 'In 1945 he was the Secretary to the Head of Control Commission in Germany.' (As he was the only Secretary!). How do you change the underlying code? I am not clued up enough on delving into the workings behind a web site!

[tatewise]

Martyn, not sure why you mention web site as no web site is involved in adjusting those sentences.
It is all controlled from within FH as part of its customisation.

For every type of Fact its Sentence wording is defined by a Template.
In the Facts tab the Sentence is shown at the bottom. Click on it and it shows the Template.

For the Occupation Attribute the default Template is:
{date} {individual} was {a/an value} {place} {age}

The components in {braces} are place-holders for data related to the Occupation Attribute.
{date} is replaced by the Occupation Date field prefixed by In or On as appropriate.
{individual} is replaced the person's name, or in reports may be he or she to avoid repeating the name.
{a/an value} is replaced by the actual occupation preceded by a or an as appropriate.
{place} is replaced by the Occupation Place field prefixed by in.
{age} is replaced by the Occupation Age field prefixed by aged.

Now there is another place-holder called {value} that is just the actual occupation without a prefix.
I suspect that the case of your grandfather needing the instead of a is going to be almost unique.
So the best solution is to edit the Template specifically for his Occupation Attribute.
Click on the Sentence box and change {a/an value} into the {value} and click elsewhere.
QED
For more details about Templates see how_to:narrative_report_fact_sentence_templates|> Narrative Report Fact Sentence Templates.
That explains how the default Template can be changed to affect a type of Fact globally.

[Jane]

There are two ways of customising, sentences for "one offs" like your example go to the fact tab select the fact and click in the sentence to edit it.

It will show

{individual} was {a/an value} {place} <at {address}> {age}

change it to

{individual} was the {value} {place} <at {address}> {age}

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You can of course completely replace the sentence if you want with no fields, but just doing minor changes means if you change the date or place information the sentence will still be correct.

If you wanted to change all the facts of a specific type to a different format you can do so in Tools>Fact Sets. Pressing help in the tool will take you to the correct place in the help to explain the fields etc.

[martynguy]

Many thanks to Jane and Mike - that seems easy enough. And Mike, yes sorry - that was a dumb thing to say from me!

[AdrianBruce]

I suspect that the case of your grandfather needing the instead of a is going to be almost unique.

It really all depends on how you use the occupation fact and its values. I find that I have a number of people where "a value" doesn't work. I have a Lieutenant Governor of North-Western Provinces and the sentence has to be adjusted to read "the Lieutenant Governor of North-Western Provinces". (Not my usual class of relative, but reality sometimes takes one down-market. Ahem) There are others where there is only one occupant of the post in question at any one time, e.g. particular company positions.

I'm also using occupation to record being an executor of a will and that looks odd if the sentence reads "an executor" when they are the only one.

So yes, no problem with the advice, but applicable to more people than perhaps one might imagine. That's if you use narrative sentences.

[BobWard]

I'll just throw out another option for consideration. Don't know if you have experimented with the different report formats that are available in FH.

If you want to avoid the grammar problems (and paragraph formatting) often associated with the standard computer templates, you can bypass them altogether by using the Individual Summary Report (ISR) option. The ISR option allows you to use the Note boxes associated with each Fact so that you can write your own text about each event in a person's life, thus completely eliminating the computer generated templates from your report.

Personally, I find the ISR format to be a very well structured and easy to read output that conveniently highlights each event in a person's life, and, lets you write their story in your own words, as opposed to computer generated text.

Upon my initial experimentation with FH report options, the ISR format was a no-brainer for me and I have never looked back. It offers customization features that let you tailor the output to your individual taste. For example, I like to have Source document records/images set up to display on a single page at the maximum size for easy reading. This is easily done on the Report Options>Sources tab once the ISR is displayed. Just be sure to save your customization settings.

You might want to experiment with the ISR option to see if it's non-reliance on computer generated text is something that would be more convenient/appealing for you.

[tatewise]

One omission from ISR is any mention of Witness Facts, which are included in Narrative Reports.

Using Notes to compose your own text can also be used in Narrative Reports by making the Template for every Fact just {note}. Source documents are handled the same way in all types of personal Reports.

[Bundle]

I echo what Bob Ward has said. I also favour Individual Summary Reports, making it easy to see a chronology of key events. At the moment I use the Note under each Residence (e.g. from the censuses 1841-1911) to put a list of a complete household: this makes it easier to follow through and see which members of the family were living together in each of the censuses. It is FH's flexibility that has won me over.

Nicola

[tatewise]

Nicola, just as an aside, it not the most usual convention to record Residence facts from Census records.
Usually, that is captured in a Census Event that itself records the Place and Address of residence.
Nevertheless, listing household members in the Note field is a useful aide memoir.

Some users complain that the ISR does not give as useful a chronology as it could.
e.g
It does not merge Family events such as Marriage and Divorce amongst the Individual facts.
It does not include Timeline Facts of the BMD events for close relatives.
It does not include Fact Witness facts.
i.e.
There are many chronological timeline facts that are shown on the Facts tab of Property Box missing from the ISR.

[Bundle]

Mike, I might well be changing over to using the Census fact as opposed to Residence. It was because this tree started out in Ancestry who put the events against residence automatically rather than census. I might well be starting the tree from scratch, a family at a time, to do it all consistently with much stronger source citations! I have been experimenting with using FH to input censuses as well as trying Ancestral Sources for census input (Method 1) - all the feedback on these forums is invaluable.

Nicola

[tatewise]

Did you see the advice in how_to:import_from_ancestry|> Import from Ancestry website and its link to Lookup Missing Census Facts: Determining Factors (14722) explaining Residence to Census fact conversion. If you need more advice on this new topic then please start a new thread.

[Bundle]

Thank you Mike, that could save a lot of time. I do intend to get my head around using Narrative Reports too; but only if I master them sufficiently to make the wording less robotic. There have been really good examples already on the forums of how to do this. Meanwhile, I am aware of the shortcomings of the ISRs, but have noted what can and can't be included in them from the report options. Thanks again.

Nicola