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Archiver > TMG > 2008-09 > 1220539919


From: Terry Reigel <>
Subject: Re: [TMG] Census Roles sentences question
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2008 10:51:59 -0400
In-Reply-To: <148EB5AC70774796843DF47F6C55C158@user522b6ef0d7>


Mary Anne Mackenzie wrote:
> I am using Roles for the enumerated people in the census,
> so the Cen-Head sentence reads:
>
> [:CR:][:CR:][P2] appeared as head of household in the
> [P1G] of [L] <as [M1].> <[M2].> Enumerated with [P2G]
> <was|were> <his wife [R:SPOUSE],> <his son|sons [R:SON],>
> <his daughter|daughters [R:DAUGHTER],> ...etcetera....
>
> If I have, as an example, a head with two sons and only
> one daughter, and the sentences set up this way, I get
> the following:
>
> Charles PAGE appeared as head of household in the 1881
> Census of St. John's Ward, Toronto, York County, as Chas.
> PAGE. He was a 62-year-old merchant..... Enumerated with
> Charles were his wife Harriet Ann THWAITES, sons Josiah
> PAGE and Walter PAGE, daughters Elizabeth PAGE.
>
> How do I get the report to recognize this, and to add an
> "and" before her name? Do I need to do it as a custom
> tag in each instance? Can I not do it as part of my Tag
> Type, so it will work automatically?

Mary Anne,

This is an example of how such complex role sentences seldom work well. To get to your question, the only way to get the "and" before the daughter is to add it to the sentence. But, if you do, and there is not a spouse and son(s) you will still get the "and" where it doesn't belong. Better, in my view, to use [CHILDREN] and let TMG list all of them, adding the "and" when appropriate.

But even that doesn't work very well, because of the fact that the spouse may or may not be present, and presumably you want an "and" between the spouse and the "his children." You can solve that by having two roles for spouse - one with children and one without, or two roles for children - with and without spouse.

There are other issues with your sentence as well. The "<was|were>" term is invalid - the construction has to include a name variable, and when it does, the first phrase is used when the person referenced by the variable does not exist, and the second phrase is used when the person does exist. Without the variable here "was" will never be used, It appears the second phrase - "were" - is always used when no variable is present.

There is a similar issue with the sons and daughters terms. As constructed, "son" will appear if there are no sons, and "sons" will always appear when there is one or more sons. Similarly for daughters.

One way to fix this is to have both a SON and SONS role, and use a construct like: <his son [R:SON],> <his sons [R:SONS],>.

Terry Reigel

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