Abbreviated views should show abbreviated date modifiers, not bare years

Julia Szent-Györgyi

Trees and other abbreviated views show modified dates ("before", "after", "about", "from ... to ...") as bare years. People keep using this fact as a reason to advocate against using modifiers. I disagree: I think modified dates can be quite useful, and the fact that they look like unmodified dates in abbreviated views is a fault of those views, not of the modifiers.

I think abbreviated views should use abbreviated modifiers. Use a tilde (~) for "about", a less-than sign (<) for "before", a greater-than sign (>) for "after", and a slash between the two numbers for "from-to".

EricShelton

Good idea. However, a slash between years could be confused with old style/new style calendar years.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

Yes, the slash has a different meaning usually. How to abbreviate date ranges is a bit of a muddle, because all views already have a date range (the person's lifespan). Perhaps a dash and some extra spacing would work. Other websites and software do things like showing the midpoint of the range, generally without labeling it, so there's no agreed-upon notation. Hmm, maybe an ampersand? Of course, that'd work a whole lot better if FS's date-range label were "between ... and" rather than the nonsensical "from ... to" that it actually uses.

Or maybe a tilde between the years?

Ross Campbell_1

I agree whole-heartedly with the author's statement that "the fact that [modified dates stripped of their modifiers] look like unmodified dates in abbreviated views IS A FAULT OF THOSE VIEWS, not of the modifiers."

I understand some of the complexities of coming up with abbreviations that can work consistently with an international audience and also work in all situations where abbreviations are needed (for reasons of space or whatever). If modifiers must be stripped because an abbreviated display is needed, maybe the dates should be stripped too if the no-longer-modified dates lose their meaning in the abbreviated display.

(I recently posted a suggestion that is similar to this one because I had not seen this one. https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/146662/display-before-when-for-example-a-birth-date-is-entered-as-before-1853/p1?new=1)