peggy0155 writes...

I use TMG 5.0. Using Gensmarts I get the following clean up suggestion: The place name in question, "Washington, DC (District of Columbia County)", comes from the birth event for xxxx. The place name used by GenSmarts for this session will be "Washington, DC (District of Columbia County) (District of Columbia County)".

I am not sure what GenSmart is suggestion. My data reads:

City Washington, DC (District of Columbia County)

County

State

Country

Is this a bug in that it states District of Columbia County twice? What is the correct way to list this city? I would leave County, and State blank woulnd't I?

On 2004-03-13 3:36pm GenSmarts replied...

GenSmarts treats anything enclosed in parens as a comment and not a formal part of a place name, so the effective name that's being analyzed in your example is "Washington, DC". That's why the message indicates a county has been added for you.

It just so happens that your "comment" of "(District of Columbia County)" was in the same format as what GenSmarts uses in the display to show the county that has been associated for you. That's why it appears to be duplicated.

Since the location is ultimately being interpretted correctly, you could simply ignore the data cleanup item. Or.. any of the following should work without having anything show up on the exception report:

City: Washington, District of Columbia County, DC

County:

State:

Country:

or...

City: Washington, District of Columbia, DC

County:

State:

Country:

or...

City: Washington, District of Columbia, District of Columbia

County:

State:

Country:

or...

City: Washington

County: District of Columbia

State: DC

Country:

or...

City: Washington

County: District of Columbia

State: District of Columbia

Country:

On 2004-08-19 5:56pm KeoniHI added...

Would not it be beter to say Washington, D.C. ( Districit of Columbia )

John Porter

On 2004-08-19 6:56pm GenSmarts replied...

That would work, though GenSmarts treats anything with parens as a comment, so you'll get a warning in Data Cleanup saying that GenSmarts had to supply a county of District of Columbia, since it didn't detect a county being provided.

I don't know if D.C. is considered a standard abbreviation (rather than DC). For what it's worth, the people that I learned from discouraged the use of any abbreviations in recording your data, and I think I've seen/heard that advice from other "official" sources as well. If you're going to abbreviate, I would think sticking with the standard postal abbreviatsion would be the way to go, but that's just my opinion.

Aaron

GenSmarts

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Tags:  TMG  

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