Software of the Month Club 1996 May

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CHAPTER 11 LISTS OF SIMILAR PERSONS, FAMILIES AND NOTES OR SEARCHING YOUR FOLDER FOR SPECIFIC INFORMATION PART I: SIX DIFFERENT LISTS OF PLACE NAMES... WHY PLACE NAMES? The PLACES command creates up to six lists of places. As you work with place lists, you'll find that they don't really fit logically with the other lists that GIM LISTS can create. For one thing, they can't be used in FROM commands to make new lists, and for another, they can't be formatted in any more than one way. However, they are much too useful to do without, even though they may feel a little out of place. WHAT PLACE LISTS CAN IT CREATE? The six place lists that can be created are: 1. A list of large place names in your folder, sorted alphabetically 2. A list of large place names in your folder, sorted by frequency 3. An outline list of place names in your folder 4. A permuted list of place names in your folder 5. A list of small place names in your folder, sorted alphabetically 6. A list of small place names in your folder, sorted by frequency "Large" place names are, for example, "Ann Arbor, Washtenaw, Michigan". "Small" place names are, for example, "Ann Arbor", "Washtenaw", and "Michigan". The meanings of "permuted" and "outline" lists are easier to see than to describe. There are examples of them below. WHAT DO THE PLACE LISTS LOOK LIKE? Let's take a small example. Let's say you have a small folder, consisting entirely of places in Arizona. To be specific, let's suppose that all of the people in your folder come from one of these places: Layton, Graham, Arizona Mesa, Maricopa, Arizona Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona Pima, Graham, Arizona Safford, Graham, Arizona Smithville, Graham, Arizona LARGE PLACES In that case, enter the PLACES command, and your first list, called "Large Place Names, Sorted Alphabetically", will look like this: Layton, Graham, Arizona Mesa, Maricopa, Arizona Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona Pima, Graham, Arizona Safford, Graham, Arizona Smithville, Graham, Arizona No big surprises, so far, right? You can probably predict what the second list, called "Large Place Names, Sorted By Frequency," will look like: Count: 1 Layton, Graham, Arizona Count: 1 Pima, Graham, Arizona Count: 1 Safford, Graham, Arizona Count: 1 Smithville, Graham, Arizona Count: 2 Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona Count: 3 Mesa, Maricopa, Arizona What this means is that the first four places each occur exactly once in the folder, and that Phoenix occurs exactly twice, and Mesa occurs three times. This DOESN'T necessarily mean that three separate persons are from Mesa; it means that after gathering up everyone's birth, christening, marriage, death, and burial places and putting them all into one pot, three occurrences of Mesa, Arizona were found. That could be from three people, or it could be a single person who was born, christened, and died there. Note that this list is sorted by frequency. Where the frequencies are the same, the list is sorted alphabetically. SMALL PLACES The two lists of small place names are similarly no big surprise. The alphabetical list of small place names will look like this: Arizona Graham Layton Maricopa Mesa Phoenix Pima Safford Smithville And the frequency list of small places will look like this: Count: 1 Layton Count: 1 Pima Count: 1 Safford Count: 1 Smithville Count: 2 Phoenix Count: 3 Mesa Count: 4 Graham Count: 5 Maricopa Count: 9 Arizona These four lists are valuable, useful lists for a number of reasons, but the real power of the PLACES commands comes from the other two lists. As we said earlier, the outline and permuted lists of places are easier to see than to describe, so let's show you what they look like with this example. OUTLINE LIST OF PLACES The outline list of places for our Arizona example will look like this: Arizona Graham Layton Pima Safford Smithville Maricopa Phoenix By itself, it doesn't look like much, perhaps, but it is probably the most useful of all six lists. For one thing, it organizes all of the place names in your folder by country, state, county, city, parish -- even down to the street address or cemetery block if you've entered that information. A list like this is invaluable when you're trying to verify the existence or the location of certain places. It's also an invaluable tool for spotlighting spelling inconsistencies. Consider the following outline, taken from actual folder data: North Carolina Forsyth Winstom Salem Winston Salem Gillford Greensboro Guilford High Point From this, it's clear to see just by looking that "Winston Salem" is misspelled somewhere in the folder, or it wouldn't have shown up here twice. Using GIM LISTS to search for any place that contains "Winstom Salem" will find it for you. (In actual fact, both of these entries are misspelled; the correct spelling is "Winston-Salem".) It's also apparent that either "Gillford" or "Guilford" is probably a misspelling. In fact, it's "Guilford" county, and "Gillford" is a misspelling. Using GIM LISTS to search for any place that contains "Gillford" and "North Carolina" should spotlight that spelling mistake. Here's another example from the same set of actual folder data: Idaho Ada Boise Bingham Goshen Shelley Taylor Blackfoot Bonneville Idaho Falls Idaho Falls Idaho Falls Kootnie Catalda From this example, it is clear that Idaho Falls is in the wrong county somewhere. Either it's in Bonneville County, Idaho, in which case the "Idaho Falls, Idaho Falls, Idaho" place name is in error, or it's in Idaho Falls County, in which case the "Idaho Falls, Bonneville, Idaho" entry is in error. In fact, there is no Idaho Falls County, and so using GIM LISTS to search for the erroneous place name should quickly tell you where that inconsistency is. From this example, it's also clear that Blackfoot, Idaho is missing a county. Blackfoot, Idaho is in Bingham county, and a quick search for "Blackfoot" should tell you where to go to fix that. PERMUTED LIST OF PLACES The permuted list of places for our earlier Arizona example will look like this: Layton, Graham, Arizona Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona Pima, Graham, Arizona Safford, Graham, Arizona Smithville, Graham, Arizona Layton, Graham, Arizona Pima, Graham, Arizona Safford, Graham, Arizona Smithville, Graham, Arizona Layton, Graham, Arizona Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona Pima, Graham, Arizona Safford, Graham, Arizona Smithville, Graham, Arizona This may not look like much at first, until you realize that it is a list of each of the small place names from the list of small places sorted alphabetically, shown in context each time each of the small place names appears in a large place name. As another example, the permuted list of places for our earlier Idaho example would look like this: Boise, Ada, Idaho Goshen, Bingham, Idaho Shelley, Bingham, Idaho Taylor, Bingham, Idaho Blackfoot, Idaho Boise, Ada, Idaho Idaho Falls, Bonneville, Idaho Catalda, Kootnie, Idaho Goshen, Bingham, Idaho Blackfoot, Idaho Boise, Ada, Idaho Catalda, Kootnie, Idaho Goshen, Bingham, Idaho Idaho Falls, Bonneville, Idaho Idaho Falls, Idaho Falls, Idaho Shelley, Bingham, Idaho Taylor, Bingham, Idaho Idaho Falls, Bonneville, Idaho Idaho Falls, Idaho Falls, Idaho Catalda, Kootnie, Idaho Shelley, Bingham, Idaho Taylor, Bingham, Idaho Note that Idaho Falls appears twice in the central column. The first time it appears, it is part of the larger place names associated with the small place name "Idaho". The second time it appears, it is part of the large place names associated with the small place name "Idaho Falls". Like the outline list of places, the permuted list of places is another way to organize place names. Either of these methods can be helpful in identifying inconsistencies and spelling errors, and either of them can be useful in identifying and verifying the existence of place names. Your personal preference will determine which of them you will choose to use.