Jump to content
bienia

NarrativeChildren sentences

Recommended Posts

This is my personal favourite feature in TMG v7, since my preference is the Journal-type narrative report and I submitted a request via the TMG Support forum for such a feature. (There were probably a lot of others who also requested a similar feature.) One of the benefits of this feature is that we, as the authors of our family history, can tailor the child sentences so the phrases are not only less repetitive, but we can add additional discussion for clarity.

 

Notes:

> Setting up the sentences and determining what to use (number of children, born in, etc., must be done by the user; there is no automation in TMG7.00 - perhaps in a future release.

> This feature only works with Primary tags for parent-child relationships. TMG only prints children in the child list with Primary tags.

> This feature is not supported in Second Site2.1, but the sentences will appear in a narrative treatment where the sort date places them. If you are planning to use this feature extensively in TMG, do some preliminary testing to check out the results in SS2.1 - a colon ending to a sentence in the middle of a paragraph may seem odd. (Again, perhaps support will come in a future version.)

 

The [NarrativeChildren] tag only works with the Journal report to replace "Children of X and Y". It does not work with any of other narrative-type reports. As a result, one has to generally disable this tag in all other narrative-type reports (if they are used) to suppress the sentences produced, unless you can create a complete sentence that can stand on its own in other narrative type reports and still provide a suitable lead-in to the children of the couple in the Journal report. (I haven't been able to come up with anything myself, and probably won't try.) To suppress this tag from other narrative reports, select Report, [report type], Options, and click on Tags tab. Under Tag Types, click Selected, the click Select All, then scroll down and double-click NarrativeChildren to unselect it, and click OK to close the window, the click Save Settings to save the settings.

 

TIP: The [:NoBirthPlaces:] code can be placed in an optional memo segment so you can add it to the memo without having to modify the local sentence.

 

Note: The [:NoBirthPlaces:] code will appear in the Sentence Preview, but not the Journal report, and as a result the Places in the Children's birth sentences are suppressed.

 

Warning: The [:NoBirthPlaces:] code will suppress the place data whether it is identical in all cases or completely different in all places - the user must ensure it is identical. This is why I have it set in the [M2] memo segment.

 

TIP: I insert a sort date that is a a couple of days after the marriage date so the [NarrativeChildren] tag immediately follows the [Marriage] tag (and [Name-Marr] for women.) While it is not required, it groups them together and gives me a visual timeframe for this tag, rather than being at the top, particularly if there are three or four or even five marriages.

 

TIP: You can use the various P, PF, PG and PO, POF, POG person variables, etc. One thing I like to do is set the Name-Marr with First Name (Maiden Surname) in the Given Names field, i.e. Jane (Doe) and the married surname in the Surname field, i.e. Smith, then choose that name variation “Jane (Doe) Smith” in the Tag Entry window.

 

Role: Principal

Sentence: [:TAB:]The <[M1]> children of [P] <and [PO]><, all born in [L]> <, [M2]> were:[:NP:]<[M3]>

Where

M1= “#” (of children), “# known”, “known”, “apparent” [Note: # represents a number, which should be written out in text rather than using the Arabic numbers. CMOS, 14th Ed.]

M2= Order (“, although the order is uncertain,”, “(ordered per [P1FS] will)” OR other comments

M3= [:NoBirthPlaces:] (to suppress birth places in child sentences; enter place in [L] fields)

 

Examples that can be created:

The children of John Smith and Jane Doe were:

The children of John and Jane (Doe) Smith, all born in Barnet, Vermont, were:

The known children of John and Jane (Doe) Smith were:

The twelve known children of John and Jane (Doe) Smith (ordered per John’s will) were:

The apparent children of John and Jane (Doe) Smith, although the order is uncertain, were:

 

Role: AsFollows

Sentence: [:TAB:][PF] <|and [PO]> had [M1] children<, all born in [L]> <, [M2]> as follows:[:NP:]<[M3]>

Where

M1= “#” (of children), “at least #”, “# known”, “known”, “apparent”

M2 & M3: as above

 

Examples:

John Smith and Jane Doe had five children as follows:

John and Jane (Doe) Smith had at least five children as follows:

John Smith and Jane Doe had five children, all born in Esquesing Twp, Halton County, Upper Canada (now Ontario), as follows:

John and Jane (Doe) Smith had five known children as follows:

 

Role: Following

Sentence: [:TAB:][P] <and [PO]> had the following <[M1]> children<, all born in [L]> <, [M2]>:[:NP:]<[M3]>

Where

M1-M3 are as above.

 

Examples:

John Smith and Jane Doe had the following five children:

John Smith and Jane Doe had the following five children, all born in Canada West (now Ontario):

Etc.

 

Role: OneChild

Sentence: [:TAB:][PF] <and [PO]> had [M1] <born in [L]> <[M2]>:[:NP:]<[M3]>

Where

M1= “one child”, “one son”, “one daughter” OR “four sons”, “three daughters”, etc.

M2= Order (as above) OR other comments

M3= [:NoBirthPlaces:] (to suppress birth place in child sentence; enter place in [L])

 

Examples:

John Smith and Jane Doe had one child:

John Smith and Jane Doe had the following five sons:

John Smith and Jane Doe had two sons, both born in Chaleur Bay, Lower Canada (now Quebec):

John Smith and Jane Doe had three daughters, all born in Chaleur Bay, Lower Canada (now Quebec), order unknown:

Etc.

 

Role: OnlyChild

Sentence: [:TAB:]The only [M1] of [PF] <and [PO]> <[M2]> was:[:NP:]<[M3]>

Where

M1= “child”, "known child", “son”, “daughter”, etc.

M2= comments

 

Examples:

The only known child of John and Jane (Doe) Smith was:

 

NOTE: The next role, ChldNotInDB, is intended for use when the child(ren) is(are) not in the database

 

Role: ChildNotInDB

Sentence: [:TAB:][P] <and [PO]> had [M1]<, [M2]>

Where

M1= “one child”, “one son”, “one daughter” OR “no children”, “no known children”, “no issue”, “# children” OR “four sons”, “three daughters”, etc.

M2= commentary

 

Examples:

John Smith and Jane Doe had no known children.

John and Jane (Doe) Smith had no children.

John and Jane (Doe) Smith had no issue.

John and Jane (Doe) Smith had five children, three boys and two girls, all living in 2007.

John Smith and Jane Doe had no known children, although there has been little research into this branch of the family by this author.

Etc.

 

The following roles are for multiple marriages with children in the database. The SecondMarr_Alt was created to allow variety in the reports between 1st and 2nd marriages.

 

Role: FirstMarr (male)

Sentence: [:TAB:][P] had <[M1]> children <with his first wife, [PO]> <, all born in [L]> <, [M2]> as follows:[:NP:]<[M3]>

Where

M1-M3 are per AsFollows role above.

 

Example:

John Smith had twelve children with his first wife, Jane Doe, as follows:

Etc.

 

Role: FirstMarr (female)

Sentence: [:TAB:][P2] had <[M1]> children <with her first husband, [P1]> <, all born in [L]> <, [M2]> as follows:[:NP:]<[M3]>

Where

M1-M3 are per AsFollows role above.

 

Examples:

Jane Doe had twelve children with her first husband, John Smith, as follows:

Etc.

 

Role: SecondMarr (male)

Sentence: [:TAB:][PF] had <[M1]> children <with his second wife, [PO]> <, all born in [L]> <, [M2]> as follows:[:NP:]<[M3]>

Where

M1-M3 are per AsFollows role above.

 

Examples:

John Smith had three children with his second wife, Elizabeth Jones, as follows:

Etc.

 

Role: SecondMarr (female)

Sentence: [:TAB:][P2F] had <[M1]> children <with her second husband, [P1]><, all born in [L]><, [M2]> as follows:[:NP:]<[M3]>

Where

M1-M3 are per AsFollows role above.

 

Examples:

Elizabeth Jones had six children with her second husband, James Small, as follows:

Etc.

 

Role: SecondMarr_Alt (male)

Sentence: [:TAB:][PF] <and his second wife, [P1]> had the following <[M1]> children<, all born in [L]><, [M2]>:[:NP:]<[M3]>

Where

M1-M3 are per AsFollows role above.

 

Examples:

John Smith and his second wife, Elizabeth Jones, had the following three children:

Etc.

 

Role: SecondMarr_Alt (female)

Sentence: [:TAB:][P2F] <and her second husband, [P1],> had the following <[M1]> children<, all born in [L]> <, [M2]>:[:NP:]<[M3]>

Where

M1-M3 are per AsFollows role above.

 

Examples:

Elizabeth Jones and her second husband, James Small, had the following six children:

 

Other ideas

 

Possessive

[:TAB:][PF] <and [POS]> [M1] children were:[:NP:]

will result in

John and Jane (Smith) Doe's twelve children were:

 

A variation could use parentheses rather than commas as in:

[:TAB:][PF] <|and [PO]> had [M1] children <(all born in [L])> as follows:[:NP:]<[M2]>

To give

John and Jane (Smith) Doe had twelve children (all born in Esquesing Township) as follows:

 

Other sentence ideas

"John Smith and Jane Doe apparently [or probably or likely] had the following children:"

 

"John Smith and Jane Doe had a blended family of 11 children (John brought 3 children from his first marriage and Jane brought 4 from her previous two marriages.) Together they had four children as follows:"

 

"John and Jane (Doe) Smith had seven children, two of whom were adopted (Lyman and Penelope) as follows: [Note: the adopted children may or may not be shown in the child list depending on whether the relationship was set to Primary.]"

 

Suggested by Jill Morelli

"According to the 1930 census, Jane Smith had given birth to 7 children, 5 of whom were still living. The four known children of John and Jane Smith were as follows:.."

 

From Terry Reigel:

[if a couple had children, but] you don't enter their children, you would automatically get a statement that they had no children. The NarrativeChildren tag offers you the opportunity to change that statement to something more accurate, for example:

 

"There were three children of X and Y, who are not identified here."

 

"No research has been done to determine whether there were any children of X and Y."

 

"The children of X and Y were W, X, and Z, who are not further described here."

 

I'm sure some clever folks can come up with better statements than these. Terry Reigel

 

______________

 

I trust you have plenty of other ideas for sentences.

 

Please share your ideas…

Edited by bienia

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×