PAF-5-USERS-L Archives

Archiver > PAF-5-USERS > 2003-09 > 1063211950


From: "Richard L. Halliday" <>
Subject: [PAF-5] State Abbreviations and USA
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 09:39:25 -0700


All;

When I am teaching beginner classes I tell the students to never use
place name abbreviations. I then ask them "What does the abbreviation 'AL'
stand for; Alaska, Alabama or Alberta, Canada?". Another treacherous one is
'Aust.' Is it Austria or Australia? Next I tell them to always follow
state names with USA.

When I am working in the Family History Center or helping with the
Sunday School class I occasionally have students who have already entered
place names using the postal abbreviations. Since we have PAF Pal on the
computers at our FHC I use it to repair the problem.

PAF Pal has another advantage. When I am working with a split screen or
any other mode where there may be insufficient space in any field to display
the full place name, I use PAF Pal to temporarily remove all of the USAs and
change all of the state names to the two letter abbreviations. When I am
finished I change them all back again.

Another use of PAF Pal is to add the commas between USA and the states.
I have recently had two patrons in our FHC who had left out some of the
commas between the state name and the USA. They were both daunted by the
task of examining every record in their databases to fix the problems. I
used the PAF Global Search and Replace to remove the USA. Then I used PAF
Pal to insert the USA. When Pal did this it automatically added the
required commas.

One of these patrons had been unable to do a temple submission because
the missing commas (e.g., Pennsylvania USA) had made TempleReady unable to
recognize the state name.

Richard L. Halliday
West Linn, Oregon (Near Portland)

-----Original Message

Richard L. Halliday
West Linn, Oregon (Near Portland)

The hardest thing about being humble
is that you cannot tell anyone about it.
-- Worker at IGI desk of the Family History Department


This thread: