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Robert Jacobs

Charts for 6" x 9" book

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I am working on a family history book to consist of a general narrative followed by custom descendancy journals. Each of the latter is to be preceded by a VCF chart -- either four or five generations deep. The page size is to be six inches by nine inches.

 

The only information needed in the boxes is name and and lifespan (years only). If there is room I would like to add either a parenthetical line ("see # xxxx") or a reference number in parentheses after the name.

 

I would be most grateful for format suggestions, particularly whether it is better to organize the chart vertically or horizontally, and also initial suggestions for box size, line thickness & the like. I don't know whether it is relevant, but the text of the book is to be set at 11 or 11.5 pts.

 

Thanks very much -- good wishes to all.

 

 

Robert

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6x9.png

 

Assuming your book is 6 wide by 9 tall, your best best for 4 generations is landscape. Other suggestions:

 

- in the chart I would try to stay close to the look of your overall book font; the example uses Times Roman 10 for both names and data.

- in a chart with small font size, it can help legibility if the surname is all caps (option on Other tab)

- left-to-right chart orientation is usually the most compact; if you want to go for portrait, make the boxes short and boxy (say 80 pixels); for landscape, these are long and slender (151 pixels).

- with a black and white chart, using the gray shadow gives some depth; if you are using color, you may not want the shadow.

- lines are 1 pixel (check they will be dark enough on the printer you use; you may need 2 pixels, but otherwise that looks heavy).

- text is aligned center (Other tab); also 'allow word wrap' and 'remove blank lines', show 'ID number' (you can use reference or whatever).

- gap within same generations is 5; between generations is 15

- the chart came out to 10x6.75 inches; I used Resize Drawing to set it to 9 x 6.

- moved title to the bottom.

- depending on how you plan to print the book, you could make a larger chart and downsize the image.

- depending on the lengths of your family names and numbers of children in a generation; you might be able to fit in a fifth generation. You'd want to run a test chart on each family first to see what options you will have to make the charts identical.

 

This is for a very simple chart - it could be dressed up, say with a frame around the page or simple embellishments. I'll look forward to other ideas. Let us know what you decide -

 

Virginia

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Virginia, thank you so much. Experiments begin in the morning! I'm immensely exciting about all this -- my narrative is edited and essentially done, and now it's time to work on layout, pictures and the like.

 

 

Robert

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Robert, you may also want to take a look at the sample designs on FamilyChartist - most of which do not use box lines.

 

Virginia

 

Thanks again, Virginia. I ran the box charts six ways to Sunday yesterday and have concluded that I'm not going to be able to get a clear display on one page -- there are just too many cousins. I think I can get reasonable clarity with the descendant indented report, but even then it will run to two pages. If I organize the report on facing pages it may be OK.

 

 

Robert

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Robert,

 

Mike Talbot's post (near the bottom of the page) on 5 gen ancestor charts is quite innovative and it might sort out your 1 page issues.

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Robert,

 

Mike Talbot's post (near the bottom of the page) on 5 gen ancestor charts is quite innovative and it might sort out your 1 page issues.

 

Yes, the removal of the spousal connectors can help compact a chart (see before and after example here) and is worth a try. This can get more complicated depending on the number and placement of children in each generation. Once the spousal connectors are removed, closing up the gap between generations can also help.

 

Because the omission of the spousal connector is an uncommon technique, some people may find it confusing - perhaps moreso without color.

 

Virginia

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I was thinking more of his idea to overlap generations which works really well for ancestors but is likely to be a bit more challenging for descendants as you would generally need to move some of the children up or down before shifting the generation to overlap with the earlier one.

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Thank you, Neil and Virginia. I'll get back to it tomorrow morning and see what I can do. This is really my first attempt to use VCF in a creative way -- my only previous use of it was a plain-vanilla hourglass chart which I've stuck up on my bulletin board to remind me of who I am when my memory fails me.

 

 

Robert

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