In Profiles' Title (a person's name) could Prefix and Suffies be put in a slightly smaller font
Hi FamilySearchers!
Today, I was entering a title and suffix before and after someone's name in a profile, and the thought struck me that if some sort of differentiation was made between the prefix/suffix(es) and a person's name, then the individual components would be more easily and rapidly apparent to the eye. This could be especially helpful for people who might be unfamiliar with certain titles and their abbreviations (which may originate from many different countries).
I experimented with making prefix & suffix text smaller, and also the combination of size with bold and unbolded text. While the largest text size I used (22) was arbitrary, the smaller text sizes were chosen based on the size of the small-text capitals in relation to the x-height of the larger text's lower-case characters (one sample slightly smaller, the other slightly taller).
Here are my efforts, for your consideration and viewing pleasure (a picture being worth a thousand words):
Would something along these lines be do-able?
Comments
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I am trying to figure out why we need a field for a prefix of suffix !!! I have indexed and reviewed 60,000 names. I would estimate that I have used these fields less than 5 times in 60,000 entries. A total waste in my humble opinion. Don Robinson
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@DonaldRobinson95, this Idea is talking about Family Tree. You're talking about indexing. It's kinda like comparing apples to socks.
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@PastaSource Your suggestion has been passed along to the appropriate department. Thank you for your input.
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I like the 16, 22, 16 version.
Looking at these, however, in light of the fact that Family Tree is used worldwide and, I hope, will be around for a couple more centuries, I would suggest the general practice of doing away with all abbreviations. The list of letters after Sir Maxwell's name are completely meaningless to me and, I suspect, most of the world. It would be far better to list all these completely spelled out as individual entries under Other Information as an Event-Title of Nobility so that the date of presentation could be included. I'd also suggest that Title of Nobility be shortened to just Title.
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I agree with Gordon that the alphabet soup is utterly meaningless and needs to be entered elsewhere, not as part of the person's name. (I realize that this was a possibly made-up example for illustration of the formatting, not of the use of the field, but still.)
However, I disagree about the greatest-contrast choice: as I wrote recently somewhere else in Community, keeping a webpage's text all close to the same size makes it easier for users to choose a zoom level that works for them, and there are enough variations in screen sizes and configurations and in people's vision to make it hard to define what size difference is too much.
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@Gordon Collett , @Julia Szent-Györgyi
While I would agree that, in order that names don't become too unwieldy, prefix & suffix fields should have a limit on the number of enterable characters, I disagree that the fields should be abolished.
Prefixes and suffixes are beneficial. They:
1) aid profile recognition, reducing errors
2) hint at a person's life-story
3) spark readers' interest
To my mind, the most important of these is recognition. Where you have a number of generations where children are given the same name as a parent, having the presence of a prefix and/or suffix is of great benefit towards significantly reducing the possibility of profile confusion.e.g.1: "John Smith", father of "John Smith", father of "John Smith".e.g.2: "John Smith", father of "Sgt John Smith", father of "John Smith CPA".The second example is a lot clearer, and provides an additional eye-friendly identifier in addition to birth/death dates.
Both of you used the word "meaningless". I personally may not understand a prefix or suffix from another country or culture, especially one which is not English-speaking, but should personal ignorance be the justification for telling people of other countries or cultures that they can't use name-additions that have significance for them? I have seen some unfamiliar prefixes and suffixes in my time, and my curiousity has turned them into learning experiences, enriching my knowledge.
Julia: good point about zoom-levels: I hadn't thought about that at all, but I don't really think it would be a problem (apart from being a bit of coding fiddle for the web developers). With regard to a name when it is a profile's heading, the text used is larger than all other text on the page. Even with a slight prefix/suffix size reduction, such reduced size would still be larger than the standard text size used on the page: if the standard text size is too small, then FamilySearch has a bigger problem! With regard to a name in a list of children or siblings on a profile page, it shouldn't be a cause for undue squinting either. Profile pages already use a font-size that is smaller than the standard text: you can see this in the different titles & text sizes used in the "Research Help" box (new page version), or in the sizes of title & text of the "Marriage" field located between a married couple (all-small in old page version; mixed sizes in new page version). In instances apart from the profile's main heading, a reduction of prefixes/suffixes to the smaller font size which is already approved and in use would be the obvious option.
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I wanted to post a link to this other discussion on titles and suffixes:
...and reiterate that these policies please be added to some sort of official guideline or style document. Something -- anything -- that we can point to and say "do it like that".
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I came across a family yesterday where a contributor thought it was a good idea to put the town of birth in the suffix box. And, said contributor had conflated at least 2 families, so the place of birth was wrong on at least half the profiles. And it was a long two-word name of a town. I would definitely vote for the suffix field having a much shorter character limit after seeing those profiles.
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I agree, but they're end up just adding it to one of the Name fields instead. I ran across a bunch earlier this week that had them inserted in the first name field, separated by dashes so it was shown in the middle of he name.
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I had one a few months ago who thought the middle name field was a good place for descriptive comments such as "not the husband of Jane Simmons" or "lived in Anglesey." Only again, that contributor had it wrong.
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Hi folks, this post was really only about the DISTINCTIVENESS of prefixes and suffixes - suggesting they maybe could be made different (font-size, boldness etc) so that a person's name becomes more readily discerned.
Remarks about the use (or misuse) of prefix, suffix and name fields for various purposes is really a separate topic and should be in a separate post...
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It's not really a separate topic though. If you limit the field to the relatively small number of prefixes and suffixes available at birth rather than the parade of abbreviations shown in the examples, then it somewhat obviates the need for a smaller font or much differentiation. And some people will see more visible space as an invitation to add more stuff.
And to be honest, I don't really have a problem parsing the name and suffixes in the example, and I think the more common suffixes like Jr., Sr., or generational numerals would look kind of odd.
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