Rob
----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Janetzko" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2004 4:48 PM
Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] Locations outside USA
"I'm not into meaningless commas either."
But the commas are NOT meaningless. Unless exactly 4 sub-fields are specified in a location, it is not always clear what is meant.
I've received a number of files where it is clear that the data is from the USA, as you mention. When "City, County, State" are all specified, the meaning is obvious. But often the location field is only "Name, State" and it is anything but clear what is meant.
Not all "Names" are uniquely obvious references to cities as are the ones you mention. There are frequent occurrences of the same unfamiliar Name being used for a city, a township, and a county, all within the same state.
Especially with older records, people frequently did not live within city limits, but maybe they did. The person who was looking at the original document knew whether Name was a city, or a township, or a county, but by creating an incomplete location field in their file, we frequently have no clue just what they are trying to specify.
Does "New York" mean New York City, New York County, or New York State? Who knows? Commas in the appropriate places would make that clear.
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of John R. Bayle Sent: Friday, December 03, 2004 22:54 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Locations outside USA
Jack wrote:
<snip>
can'tMaybe I am breaking hallowed rules, but for UK locations I use village, town, county, country or town, county, country. Of course that means Ieasily find all locations in villages around a larger town and wouldwelcomesuggestions for improving the ability to search - but I hate adding meaningless commas!
Jack, I'm not into meaningless commas either. I have very few "county" names in my database. Here are two typical entries in my database. "Glens Falls, New York". Going by the "letter of the law", this should be: "Glens Falls, Warren, New York, United States of America". (I don't like using abbreviations, such as USA or NY -- that's another discussion) Similarly, Montreal, Quebec Which again by the "letter of the law", should be: Montreal, Ille de Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
I don't put in all the extra stuff, because anyone looking at my file knows it's based in the United States. When I've traced a line back to France, I do add France, the country to be sure folks know we are talking about France and not Quebec. I have a lot of French Canadians in my database.
Montreal Quebec is so obvious to me that further explanation is redundant and a waste of time. Similarly, Glens Falls, New York is completely specified. I'm not aware of any place called "New York" that is not in the USA, except for places like the New York Bar in various cities around the world. Also, if one looks at New York state, there is only one Glens Falls in the state. If there were two and they were in different counties then I'd name the counties. BTW there is a similar place called West Glens Falls in the same county as Glens Falls, so adding the county wouldn't help distinguish the two places, and there is a South Glens Falls, but it's in a different county. But again, adding the county adds very little if anything since the towns are differently named even if similarly named.
jr
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