Can I record Quarter Dates or not?
The typical need for these comes with BMD events in England & Wales Civil Registration when the dates for the events are informally known as Q1, Q2, Q3 or Q4.
One example on the index file "England and Wales Birth Registration Index, 1837-2008" is:
Registration Quarter | Jul-Aug-Sep |
|---|---|
Registration Year | 1953 |
If I enter "Q3 1953" (which is the July, August, September Quarter), the system "cleverly" recognises the 3 in Q3 and decides that I mean "March".
I tried "Third quarter 1953" and again the cleverness works against me as it recognises that the word "Third" obviously (not!) means March.
I have failed to find a way to enter this quarter date in any useful way. I would be perfectly happy to enter Q3 1927 and have it standardised to just 1927. I can't find any key combination to do that.
Any ideas?
項留言
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Not that this will help, but I've had a similar problem on one of the big for-pay genealogy websites. Entering a quarter date makes the entry drop to the bottom of the timeline.
Not a great solution, but maybe use the year only in the date field and put the quarter in the reason box?2 -
What does it do with "quarta tertia"? (Or "Q tertia"?)
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@Julia Szent-Györgyi - would you believe it standardises "quarta tertia" to April 😮
Áine - that's what I've been doing - it's not ideal, as you say, so I wondered if anyone had a solution.
It's just too clever, this software, and not in a nice way.
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"Too clever" doesn't even begin to cover it.
I tried "1850 (first quarter)", for which it offers two choices: 1851 or January 1850.
1851?!??
On the bright side, it doesn't know Hungarian: "1850 (első negyed)", "1850 (második negyed)", "1850 (harmadik negyed)", and "1850 (negyedik negyed)" can all be standardized to 1850 (as the only choice). Unfortunately, this would be about as useful for the general public as the piece of masking tape on the back of the padlock, with the combination written out in Hungarian words. (Yes, I did this with my school lockers.)
These disimprovements mean that FS has basically done away with what used to be one of the best features of the dual-entry system: the ability to include more information than what's in the database. Now, if it's not in the database in exactly that spelling and punctuation, then chances are that you cannot enter it.
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I have noticed that some put the last month of the quarter for the date. i.e. March for Q1. Personally, I only enter the year, and then in the box below (labeled Reason This Information Is Correct) I enter the quarter.
Just a note that the entry is recorded in the month that the event was recorded. So in the case of first quarter entries, some of them will be for an event that actually happened the year before.
You can verify the actual date by purchasing the digital record from Gro.gov, cost about $3.16.
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@Jaelene Starr - yes, as you say, some people seem to put Mar 1925 for Q1 1925. I'm not happy with that representation because how can anyone tell the difference between Mar meaning Q1 and Mar meaning, err, March! Like you, I end up putting the year as the date, and the quarter in the box below.
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One option is to use the date range feature: specify "from 1 April 1850 to 30 June 1850" for dates in Q2 of 1850.
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Interesting thought… Although it's a hobby horse of mine that FamilySearch won't standardise on "Between … And …" but insists on using "From … to …". After all, no-one is born from 1 April to 30 June. That's an awfully long labour!
Having said that, I've just discovered I can enter "Between April yyyy And June yyyy" and it will look right even though it standardises to "From April yyyy To June yyyy". Or at least my one experiment works OK…
Hmm… Interesting, thanks
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