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Archiver > APG > 2002-12 > 1038784929


From: Elisabeth Thorsell <>
Subject: Re: [APG] Handling Missing/Illegible Data
Date: Mon, 02 Dec 2002 00:23:12 +0100
References: <NGBBLNELCLLKFDLAJCLNCEFJCAAA.jerryf@SoftwareRenovation.com> <000801c29989$6ab15110$210110ac@DICK>


"Richard A. Pence" skrev:

> Jerry Fitzpatrick" <> wrote:
>
> > Considering the similarity of information regarding births and
> > deaths, a standard form could easily be created for use by the
> > entire country or, for that matter, the entire world. Maybe
> > provincialism and sovereignty are the reasons this hasn't
> > happened. Still, wouldn't it save time and headaches if birth
> > records had the same format everywhere?
>
> > Now I'm not suggesting that we overthrow the government
> > <g>! I'm just pointing out that universal standards are better
> > than provincial ones (even though they implicity ask people
> > to change their current behavior and conform to something new).
>
> Alas, we all know there are more precise ways of doing things. Making people
> aware of them and then getting them to use them is a lot more difficult than
> it may sound.
>
> For example, when I first started in genealogy nearly 40 years ago, all of
> the references I consulted told me that the proper way for genealogists to
> express dates - one of the elements involved in birth or death data - was,
> for example, 1 Dec 2002. There are several reasons given for this, the most
> important being the need to avoid the ambiguity involved in expressing dates
> entirely with numbers (e.g., 9/8/1947 means something different in the U.S.
> than it does in Europe - and no matter which side of the pond you are on,
> you are never quite sure whether the writer intended the date to be 9 Aug or
> 8 Sep).
>
> But if you look around you, the tools we use rarely express dates in
> day-written month-year format. The SSDI does; the California Death Index
> does not (it uses nn/nn/nnnn). The default date format in the most commonly
> used genealogy program is the "September 5, 1919." Why, I have never been
> able to find out.
>
> Way back in 1982, I learned from an article on this topic in Paul Andereck's
> _Genealogical Computing_ that there is, indeed, an international standard
> (at least in some disciplines) for expressing dates. It is
> "largest-to-smallest": year, month, day, hour, minute, seconds (or further,
> depending on the discipline). Made sense then and now. For example, if you
> are using a generic database to house some records, you can do a date sort
> (try that with 9/8/1947 or 8 Sep 1947). But aside from that article, I have
> never heard it again argued that genealogy programs should use that format.
>
> I suppose the reason is if you can't get them to use the recommended format
> (9 Aug 1947 or 9 August 1947), how in the world could you get them to use
> 1947.8.9?
>
> I expect to continue seeing genealogical dates expressed as "September 8,
> 1947" because that's one format we are all used to - and the default format
> in some genealogy programs.
>
> Regards,
> Richard A. Pence, Fairfax, VA 22030
> Pence Family History <http://www.pipeline.com/~richardpence/>;
>
> Regards,
> Richard,
>
> ==== APG Mailing List ====
> The Association of Professional Genealogists
> http://www.apgen.org/publications/apg-l/index.html

>

Richard Pence wrote:

> Way back in 1982, I learned from an article on this topic in Paul Andereck's
> _Genealogical Computing_ that there is, indeed, an international standard
> (at least in some disciplines) for expressing dates. It is
> "largest-to-smallest": year, month, day, hour, minute, seconds (or further,
> depending on the discipline). Made sense then and now. For example, if you
> are using a generic database to house some records, you can do a date sort
> (try that with 9/8/1947 or 8 Sep 1947). But aside from that article, I have
> never heard it again argued that genealogy programs should use that format.
>
> I suppose the reason is if you can't get them to use the recommended format
> (9 Aug 1947 or 9 August 1947), how in the world could you get them to use
> 1947.8.9?
>
> I expect to continue seeing genealogical dates expressed as "September 8,
> 1947" because that's one format we are all used to - and the default format
> in some genealogy programs.
>
> Regards,
> Richard A. Pence, Fairfax, VA 22030
> Pence Family History <http://www.pipeline.com/~richardpence/>;
>
> Regards,
> Richard,
>
> ==== APG Mailing List ====
> The Association of Professional Genealogists
> http://www.apgen.org/publications/apg-l/index.html

Hi,

It might interest you to know that in Sweden we try to follow most rules and
especially the more funny ones (you don't want to know about the European
Union's rules about the curvature of cucumbers), so we write often our dates in
the international format, like 19450815 which means 15 August 1945.

My Swedish genealogy program requires me to enter dates that way (19450815),
then I can chose from 10 different ways to print it out, and our genealogical
standard is 1945 15/8, but youngsters often use the basic format of 19450815. I
don't like that much, as it requires you to think too much before getting it
into the standard form.

We do not have Social Security Numbers, but we do have a "person number", which
is based on your birth date, like 19080710-8712, where the last four digits
shows if you are male or female, and might show which part of the country you
were born in.

Just thought this might be of some interest.

God Jul!
--
Elisabeth Thorsell
Swedish genealogist & writer
http://welcome.to/Elisabeth.Thorsell
Läs http://vi-slaektforskare.cjb.net
Vi Släktforskare - Elektroniskt nyhetsbrev
med det senaste om det gamla (Swedish only)


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