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Archiver > TMG > 2005-04 > 1112638607


From: "Darrell A. Martin" <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] Why are local sentences bad?
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2005 18:16:47 +0000
References: <003301c53921$4dd9a3a0$086e6344@tom0dnsc7w60co><200544104712.823963@Terry3>
In-Reply-To: <200544104712.823963@Terry3>


At 02:47 PM 4/4/2005, Terry Reigel wrote:
>[snip]
>
>My concern is that there seldom is one sentence in person's narrative.
>And each one has to work with all those around it. That's why I read a
>narrative, then modify local sentences to polish it. If I then change
>a tag type globally, I risk messing up finished narratives for
>hundreds of people that I've already polished.
>
>Terry

Hi, Terry:

My *perception* is that most of the problems that arise when trying to make a sentence "work with all those around it", come from one or more custom sentences already existing in the data. Put another way, "I use custom sentences because global sentences don't go together well with my custom sentences."

I am not an objective user, though. In my opinion, if one wants free-flowing narrative prose, one would be best served by creating output to a word processor file format, and editing that. But I am not concerned by that, because I do not find repetitive sentence structures bothersome in genealogical text. The very nature of the data is repetitive: father, mother, child, they did stuff; father, mother, child, they did stuff; father, mother, child, they did stuff.... That does not keep me from making frequent use of the <[M]> variable in my global sentences (*every* Role for *every* Tag Type has one). If I need narrative, I use the Memo. It works fine.

Darrell


Darrell A. Martin
a native Vermonter currently in exile in Illinois
http://www.darrell-martin.net/genealogy/


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