Do you ever want to ‘tell’ an ancestor’s story versus just a list of dates and facts? For me, that is my preferred method of sharing information about an ancestor.
Although my genealogy software, RootsMagic, provides a quick and easy way to generate those reports, there is some pre-work that goes into their creation. In order to have paragraphs, one needs sentences.
I first learned to build these sentences when using The Master Genealogist. The community of users for that software was fantastic about figuring out creative ways to build a complicated sentence. Even though, the ‘memo’ feature found in TMG did not transfer to RootsMagic, I am learning how to manipulate the sentences in RootsMagic.
Armed with that basic knowledge of how the sentence structure works, I have learned to modify the order of the text to add variety to a narrative report.
One of the ‘hacks’ I use on a regular basis is to rearrange the order of the elements in the sentence so that there is some variety. An easy way to do this is to move the date to the front of the sentence. When I have a group of facts that all place the date to the end of the sentence, I can customize the sentence for one or more of those facts.
For example, my grandfather has 7 facts between 1938 and 1941 that will all have a similar sentence structure with the date toward the end of the sentence.
Clicking on each fact will reveal the sentence.
Clicking on the ‘Customize Sentence’ to the right side of the window about the sentence, will open the window where I can change the order of the parts of the sentence.
To move the date to the start of the sentence, I simply highlight the < [Date]> portion of the sentence, being sure to get the greater than and lesser than signs that surround the Date. I then cut the Date and move my cursor to the start of the sentence where I paste it.
Now, I have to do a little bit of editing. Firstly, the space between the < and the [ before the word Date needs deleted. Otherwise the sentence will have a leading space.
I also tend to add a comma (and a space) after the date. I place the comma and space to the left of the > so that they will only print if there is date information.
The bottom half of the ‘Customize Sentence’ window will show the sentence as it will appear. If you don’t like your change hit the CANCEL button instead of the OK button.
Creating these narrative reports allow me (or I should say, require me) to go back thru the data I have on the individual and check it for accuracy. I then also check the sources attached to each fact to make sure that my source citation would allow someone else to locate the source.