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What to do when you can't understand a specific text on a record?

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LuiS_R
LuiS_R ✭
April 27, 2022 edited August 16, 2024 in Get Involved/Indexing

Say you're working on a record and have completed most of it, but for some reason don't understand a certain field, (e.g. scribbled or illegible) - what is the best practice for this? Would you put BLANK? or...?

Tagged:
  • Indexing
  • historical records
  • Handwriting
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  • Julia Szent-Györgyi
    Julia Szent-Györgyi ✭✭✭✭✭
    April 27, 2022 Answer ✓

    If this is regarding indexing, then (a) there's a category better suited to that, and (b) it'll depend rather highly on the specifics: is the field required or optional? Do the project instructions say anything about what to do with illegible text? FS's generic indexing instructions call for a question mark for a single unreadable character and an asterisk for multiple consecutive unreadable characters, or ctrl-U for an entire field that's unreadable. (I've never been able to figure out how to tell how many characters are unreadable. Often, the whole problem is seeing two characters as one or one character as two.)

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Answers

  • Brett .
    Brett . ✭✭✭✭✭
    April 27, 2022

    @LuiS_R

    FYI

    Welcome to the "Community.FamilySearch" Forum.

    I am just another 'lowly' User/Patron ...

    Just in passing ...

    So that, we may better, be able to help/assist ...

    Question: DOES that matter, that you raise, RELATE, to "Indexing"?

    [ Or, something else ... ]

    Please advise/clarify.

    'Thank You', in advance.

    Brett

    0
  • LuiS_R
    LuiS_R ✭
    April 27, 2022

    @Julia Szent-Györgyi

    Thanks for your answer! Ah yes -- now that you mentioned that, I remember learning about that. That makes sense!

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