Steve and Bunny,

Are there really no standards for abbreviated names in  indexes?  If you
regularly use the three-column system, that might be acceptable, but unless
you are taking great pains to explain your guesswork, it seems you would
confuse the beginner rather than provide help.  And what search engine are
you talking about?  Google and ancestry.com both offer help for abbreviated
names.  I'm sorry, but when I see your work in the future, I'll be making a
mental note that it is not entirely reliable.

Thos. Gilmore


On Thu, Jan 22, 2009 at 10:01 PM, Yvonne and Steve <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I find this subject to be most interesting. It applies directly to our
1790/1800 Virginia Tax List Censuses website. We have indexed almost 130,000
names so far and I will state that we have not followed the rules that
Elizabeth Shown Mills has cited. The surnames are indexed just like they are
written (to the best that I can decipher). But the abreviated given names
are not. It has been a dilemma indexing the abreviated given names. I have
always been aware of the different possibilites for each abreviation. In
some cases the name we indexed is written in 2 columns. It is abreviated in
one column but fully written in the other column. We always used the full
name in our indexes. But when only an abreviated given name appears we have
"assumed" a full name and indexed it as such....

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