TMG-L Archives
Archiver > TMG > 2004-03 > 1079067031
From: Dennis Lee Bieber <>
Subject: RE: [TMG] Date Modifiers
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 20:50:31 -0800
References: <000901c4076c$cc552110$6401a8c0@MYRNICE><005001c4077d$569bbd10$4401a8c0@RichardA31>
In-Reply-To: <005001c4077d$569bbd10$4401a8c0@RichardA31>
On or about 07:27 03/11/04 a carrier pigeon from Richard Damon delivered:
>It really depends on what you think "about" means. My sources tend to define
>"say" as a guess. An example would be you know the date of marriage of a
>couple and the order their children were born, but are missing dates, you
>guess that the children were born about every two years apart after the
>marriage, and give these a "say" date. It tells people that the dates could
>be quite far off, and you have little evidence for them. I tend to treat
>"about" and "circa" as pretty much the same ("circa" can be translated as
>"about") and typically use it when I am computing a year from a age, or I
>have other evidence that something happened in close proximity to another
>event.
Whereas my mental impression of "circa" is that it indicates a +/-
range of some large period, whereas "about" is a finer resolution. And
"say" is a total guess... something stuffed in just to give a value to some
reasoning... As "dialog":
XYX was <something> circa 1925 equivalent to ... Roaring
Twenties, sometime in the decade <G>
XYZ was <something> about 1925 pretty sure it was the mid
twenties, maybe 24-26
XYZ was <something>, oh, say 1925 one has no idea, but is
picking a number that fits other information
--
> ============================================================ <
> | Wulfraed Dennis Lee Bieber KD6MOG <
> | Bestiaria Support Staff <
> ============================================================ <
> Home Page: <http://bieberd.home.netcom.com/>; <
This thread:
| RE: [TMG] Date Modifiers by Dennis Lee Bieber <> |