Do you use standardized place names in your genealogy files? If so, do you ever get tired of narrative reports repeating the name of the country over and over? Because my ancestral line is so deeply rooted in the United States, I can only speak from a U.S. perspective. In my experience, the only time I’ve added the words ‘United States’ to and address is within my genealogy program. Thus, I get tired of the repetitive use of the full standardized name in narrative reports.
For example, the majority of my life has been spent in Seneca, Kansas. Thus, entries for events in my life during my time in Seneca would utilize the standardized place name of ‘Seneca, Nemaha, Kansas, United States.’ That’s a huge ‘mouthful’ to appear repeatedly in a narrative report when most people would recognize that ‘Seneca, Kansas’ is the same place as ‘Seneca, Nemaha, Kansas, United States’.
Another issue I have with standardized place names is that the standardization drops the word ‘county’. For example, if I was wanting to cite a tax record for myself, the standardized place for that record would be ‘Nemaha, Kansas, United States.’ In this example, I would prefer to just say ‘Nemaha County, Kansas’.
I would also prefer to use the word ‘county’ when the name of the city and the name of the county are the same. For example, the standardized place name for the city of Los Angeles is ‘Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States. I would prefer to use ‘Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California’ so that I know for certain that the place is the city and not the county.
Well, I recently discovered that I can incorporate my desired method of naming places while still using standardized place names in my RootsMagic software. This is possible thru the use of a Place Abbreviation. Since most of my current research involves Warren County, Indiana, that is where I’ve started working with this abbreviation field.
Because I’ve never used the ‘Abbrev’ field before, my places don’t have data in that field. Starting with the places I’m currently researching, I’m slowly adding abbreviations. For example:
- Pike Township, Warren, Indiana, United States will be abbreviated Pike Township, Warren County, Indiana
- West Lebanon, Warren, Indiana, United States will be abbreviated West Lebanon, Indiana
- Warren, Indiana, United States will be abbreviated Warren County, Indiana
Once I have the abbreviation entered for a place, I can then modify the sentence structure to use the abbreviation instead of the standardized name. For example, my land entry fact uses the following sentence template.
[Person] land entry papers <[Desc]> <[Date]> <[Place]>.
For Nelson Crawford, this produces the following sentence:
Nelson Garret Crawford file land entry papers for the South East quarter of section nineteen in Township twenty three North of Range Nine West on 1 February 1851 in Crawfordsville, Montgomery, Indiana, United States.
I can force the use of the place abbreviation by adding ‘:abbrev’ to the place field. Below is an example of that change.
[Person] land entry papers <[Desc]> <[Date]> <[Place:abbrev]>.
This change in the sentence template is reflected in the preview section of the Edit Sentence window.
If I want to use the abbreviation every time a specific fact is used, I can modify the fact template to make that change. To access my list of fact templates, I have to use the ‘Command Palette’ (icon looks like a paint palette in the upper right corner of the screen). Scrolling down the list of commands, I click on Fact Types to open the list.
From my list of fact types, I locate the one I wish to change.
Clicking the edit button allows me to change the Fact setup. However, to change the sentence template, I have to edit the role where the sentence is used.
When I click to edit a role, I can then add ‘:abbrev’ to the Place in the sentence template.
Clickinig the OK button changes the sentence template for the role.
When using the :abbrev setting, one needs to remember the following:
- Changing the sentence template for an individual fact only changes the template for that specific event and does not affect other similar events for that individual OR for any other person in the data base.
- Changing the sentence template for a fact type role affects every use of that fact/role throughout the database. This is considered a ‘global’ change.
- Adding the :abbrev field only works IF the place has an abbreviation entered.
Now, that I’ve discovered this capability, I will be slowly modifying [Place] to [Place:abbrev].