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Sentence Order

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Hi

 

I have been battling with creating meaningful, readable decendancy narrative. Sentance construction is OK. I have been concatenating sentences such you have one sentance for where sombody was, there age and any medical condition. This works but the sentences are not in a consistent order so the age is usually tacked on the the census wherabout but the medical condition usally tacks on to the occupation.

 

How can I move the medical condition so it tacks on after the age?

 

The tag order in the person view has the medical condition right after age

 

Dave

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Dave,

 

There are four issues that can cause tags to appear in a different order in reports than they do on screen.

 

1. Failure to use sort dates appropriately. When two or more tags have the same sort date, there is no way to predict what order they will appear in on screen or in reports. The fact that they appear in one order on screen does not guarantee they will appear in the same order in reports. I suspect this is the issue with your census, age, medical condition, and occupation tags - you have entered the same date for all of them. The solution is to force them into the desired order by entering unique sort dates for every tag.

 

2. Using fewer tags in reports. When you filter which tags appear in reports by using any of the options on the Tags tab in report Options, or the Surety settings, tags can be omitted in the report, causing a tag to appear following a different tag than you expected. You need to use care when concatenating tags if you filter the tags used in reports.

 

3. Using the BMDB first option. If you select this option in reports, those tag in those groups will appear first and not be placed among the other tags. They will also be forced in the the BMDB order, regardless of their sort dates. Thus tags that follow one another on screen will not do so in the report.

 

4. Undated tags - all appear either before or after all dated tags, in no predictable order, depending on how you have set this in Preferences. They always appear first in reports.

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btw... You won't even see the sort dates if you are in the "Beginner" data entry mode.

 

If that's the case, you need to change to the 'Advanced' data entry mode.

File / Preferences / Program Options / Data Entry tab / Data Entry Mode / select Advanced

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btw... You won't even see the sort dates if you are in the "Beginner" data entry mode.

 

If that's the case, you need to change to the 'Advanced' data entry mode.

File / Preferences / Program Options / Data Entry tab / Data Entry Mode / select Advanced

 

 

In Beginner Mode, you can see Sort Dates in the Details View (but not in the Tag Entry Screen) if you uncheck 'Show date instead of sort date' in Preferences. You cannot set Sort Dates in Beginner Mode, but can switch to Advanced Mode to set them.

 

Virginia

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Thanks for that Terry - yes all the census events including the occupation had the same date. I have now ordered the occupation to the day after the census and now we get the census location, age, medical condition and marrital status all in one sentence in that order followed by the occupation as a seperate sentence.. This isn't too much of a chore as only a few people have medical conditions recorded

 

Ideally I would like seperate occupation tags 1841 Census Occupation etc etc instead of just Occupation then I could roll the whole census sentence into one, it wouldn't even matter if was in incorrect order. Could then use different wording that makes more sense reference where the data came from. Also perhaps a seperate tag for occupations as provided by marriage certs and baptism records. However tying to split the occupation tag up into these would have to be done manually and there is just too much data for that.

 

I could even explore the possibilities of roles now so the census sentence includes or mentions the whole family but again should have done this at the start.

 

TMG is a bit of a chicken and egg thing, You really should plan out what you want and how to get it before you start - but before you start you don't know how to use it.

 

Dave

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Hi Dave,

 

Now that you have discovered the wonderful world of Sort Dates :D you might like some more details. One nice thing about Sort Dates is that they never output, so you can put whatever you want in them. But I prefer to always have the "real" date as "part" of the Sort Date that I use. For details, see my earlier posting here for my way to sort an unlimited number of tags associated with the same "real" date.

 

Hope this gives you ideas,

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Hi yes after alot if fidling arounf I have decided the only way to get this to my satisfaction is to split the occupation tag up per source which is an awful lot of work. So I am just contemplating that now.

 

This is really to get the wording correct rather than the order.

 

It would be nice if you didn't have to manually enter the sort order to acheive the order you want for tags. What would be good is a sort option in the person view - an up arrow down arrow for example - the sort order field itself is of no intrest to the user of the application.

 

Dave

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Dave,

 

I find it generally works better to put all the occupation discussion together, and not spread it out into separate tags intermixed with other tags. I generally put it near the end. Most of the time I make a single tag, and in the Memo write something that captures the sequence as best I can. For example:

 

"a farm laborer on the family farm by age 14, and had his own farm by 1910. By 1920 he had become an insurance salesman."

 

I don't like to simply say he was this in 1900, that in 1910, etc. because it leaves the narrative full of holes. The reader asks why didn't I say what he was in 1912, 1913, etc.?

 

I generally put the occupation all in one tag, with multiple sources. If they don't all give the same information, I note in the CD of each citation what that source says. In the later censuses there are separate fields for occupation, industry, and whether the person was working for wages or on his own account. I generally don't use those terms directly in the memo, but instead convert it into more readable language. In that case I do record in the CD what each field in the census recorded.

 

When I have a lot of information about a person's occupations I do split it into multiple tags.

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Like Terry, I generally have a single Occupation tag for a life with multiple sources. In fact, for most reports I do not choose to select my census tags for output, but simply have the census as a source for the information I got from the census records that I put in others tags, such as Birth and Occupation tags. TMG is flexibile that way.

 

As for the Sort Dates versus up/down arrows, such arrows might be easier but I think it is just a matter of getting used to Sort Dates. I happen to like them as I can choose specific forms for specific situations, and leave "holes" in these dates which reminds me of the need for data I am still researching.

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Hi,

 

The memo is far more poweul than I had first thought and allows you to tailor text per source. However again if I was going to use this method I should have used from the start.

 

I have found you can use John Cardinal's utility to order sort date, just experimenting cautiously with this at the moment.

 

TMG 8 I gather has some new reporting tools & you can use in 64bt mode on W7 - do we have any ~ release date known?

 

Dave

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Ah, OK it doesn't do what I thought it did

 

Set Sort Dates will not change existing sort dates, regardless of how they were set. As a result, it can not be used to alter sort dates set by a previous use of Set Sort Dates.

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Dave,

 

I think you can remove (all or selected?) existing Sort Dates by use of the TMG Utility "Find and Replace" function. I suggest carefully reading its Help and experimenting. Then you could Set Sort dates. Since TMGU is so powerful, remember to always backup your project first before using it so you can restore if necessary. And use the "Log Only" feature to get an idea of what it is doing before you actually change the project.

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Hi smee again.

 

I had decided on a sperate census occupation tag...but was then thinking about the occupations you get from birth certificate or marriage certificate. Started thinking about roles. I've added a Father's Occupation role and constructed a sentence for that on the standard Birth Tag.

 

[:CR:][:CR:]At the time of his son [PF]'s birth <[DD]>, [FATH] was a <[L7]> living at <[L]>

 

I ummed and ahed about where to record the actual data - L7 is not included in L and is first "unused" line, however the memo field might be better. This lets me add both bits of data we glean about a father from the birth certificate. You can do the same thing for marriage.

 

Which of course then starts me thinking for an occupation role for the census. I can get the data entered in one tag, see the data in the person view, and it prints.

 

Still playing with this though

 

Dave

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Is there a way to display the sort dates on the Person page (display)?

Sure would be handy

Thanks

Kenny

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You can show the sort date instead of the entered date by unchecking "Show Date instead of Sort Date" on the Program Options > Tag Box section of Preferences.

 

An enhancement to this has been announced for ver. 8.

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You can show the sort date instead of the entered date by unchecking "Show Date instead of Sort Date" on the Program Options > Tag Box section of Preferences.

 

An enhancement to this has been announced for ver. 8.

Thanks Terry

Does help alot, but it would be nice if Ver 8 could display both

Kenny

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