Appendix F - CONVENTIONS AND ABBREVIATIONS

Most of the conventions and abbreviations used in genealogy have already been covered in other sections. The following are now added for completeness:

1.      Women are always entered under their birth names.

2.      The husband is usually entered first in a marriage unless there have been several marriages when they are arranged for convenience.

3.      Children are arranged in order of their birth dates.

4.      Where children are born outside marriage, instead of the usual marriage symbols, two wavy lines are used to connect the parents: .

5.      It is useful to include the class of relationship in the records, i.e. Direct (D), Collateral (C), Combined (C+D), Monozygotic (M) or Not Related (NR).

6.      If the exact date of birth, marriage or death is not known, the approximate date should be prefixed by c. or circa or abt.

7.      To distinguish between birth and baptism dates use b. and bapt., and for deaths and burials use d. and bur.

8.      A common error introduced when transcribing information from American sources on dates is to get the days and months in the wrong order. E.g. 11^th February, 1908 in the U.S. A. is abbreviated as 2/11/1908 but in Britain it appears as 11/2/1908.

9.      If a person is known to exist, e.g. a wife or a child, but the name is unknown or only partially known, use a question mark or some other symbol to denote his or her existence. If only the gender is known, state male or female or use the sex symbols ( or ).

10.  Usually a person's name indicates the gender of that person. However, with names used in an unconventional way, the gender should be made clear.

11.  With written records, as opposed to computerised records, it is a good plan to give each individual, each family and each generation separate reference numbers.