Number of children sentence

[DeAnna Burghart 0]

Sometimes, I just want to rattle the kids' names off without diving any further down the tree. Perhaps the relative in question is only distantly related. Perhaps I don't know more than their names, and the formal format is superfluous. Perhaps it's a step family that I'm not following. Perhaps I'm just in a bad mood and don't like their picture. Whatever the reason, I created this sentence for those times I don't feel like falling down the rabbit hole.

 

[P]<|and [PO]> had [M1] children<, [M2]>

 

[M1] is obviously a number, [M2] is a list of the children's given names, or perhaps just what little I know. Examples:

 

John and Sally had three children, all born at Norfolk: Sally Sue, John Jr., and Asa A.F.W. No further information is known.

 

John and Sally had three children, presumably born at Norfolk. Their names are not known.

 

John and Sally had three children, Sally Sue, John Jr., and Asa.

 

John and Sally had no children.

[hookedfeather 0]

Did you make a tag for this--"Children"? If so, how does it print out in a journal for example, in place of the children section? RJ Morris

 

Sometimes, I just want to rattle the kids' names off without diving any further down the tree. Perhaps the relative in question is only distantly related. Perhaps I don't know more than their names, and the formal format is superfluous. Perhaps it's a step family that I'm not following. Perhaps I'm just in a bad mood and don't like their picture. Whatever the reason, I created this sentence for those times I don't feel like falling down the rabbit hole.

 

[P]<|and [PO]> had [M1] children<, [M2]>

 

[M1] is obviously a number, [M2] is a list of the children's given names, or perhaps just what little I know. Examples:

 

John and Sally had three children, all born at Norfolk: Sally Sue, John Jr., and Asa A.F.W. No further information is known.

 

John and Sally had three children, presumably born at Norfolk. Their names are not known.

 

John and Sally had three children, Sally Sue, John Jr., and Asa.

 

John and Sally had no children.

[Terry Reigel 0]

When this original post was made there was no way to make the custom tag replace the "There were no children of ..." statement. With version 7 that can now be done. To do it, you need to use the new NarrativeChildren tag. See my article on Customizing the List of Children for details.

[wunner 0]

Terry: Shouldn't the new NarrativeChildren tag have included the "||" delimiter in the default sentence to make use of the "living" flag? That would result in "...children are..." or "...children were..." much the same as produced in the pre-version 7 journal reports.

 

John

[Terry Reigel 0]

John,

 

It wouldn't actually be the same result. In the standard childrne statement, the use of "are" or "were" depends on whether the children are all living. If you used the || delimiter the result would depend on whether the parent is living. Not the same thing, in general.

 

In my view, no one should ever use the default sentence in the NarrativeChildren tag. Doing so simply replicates the standard statement, but without all the features the standard statement has. What's the point?

 

Rather, I see the default sentence as a model to be used to create the custom sentences which allows the specific output for a specific families that is the whole point of the feature.