Shirley, you are a dear person and a rare treasure, as well as a boon
to all of us CADY researchers. The mails systems though, are going to
frustrate you no matter how neatly you type.
Some of have our mail set to put everything in Times New Roman, which
is a proportional font; "W" and "M" take up more space than
"i" does.
Some of us have our mail set to put everything in Courier, which is a
non-proportional font; "W" and "i" take up the same space. Some use
different fonts altogether. Some of us get our mail in whatever font
it was sent. The two lines below each have 10 characters. They will
show you if you have a proportional or non-proportional font. If they
are the same length, you have non; if the one with M and W is longer,
you have a proportional font:
MWMWMWMWMW
iiiiiiiiii
The differences in font alone makes sending nicely lined up tabular
data difficult. I wondered, in your first message, if Mary Cady's
mother was "Mette" and she married "Cornish Elwell", or her mother
was "Mette Cornish" and she married "Elwell." Your second message
made
it clear the latter was the case.
There are two things you can do.
1) Put dividers between the columns. "/" or "|" work. If you use
"/",
make sure you use "-" in the dates, or put the dates as "01 Apr
1776".
In the example above, you would have
"/ Mette Cornish / Elwell "
and it would be obvious that Mette Cornish was the Mother's name.
2) Line it up in a non-proportional font and tell people which one and
what size. That is, add a line at the top saying "This lines up in
10-point courier". Then people can copy the message, paste it into
Word, Word Perfect or whatever, change the font to match what you want
it to be in, and see it as neatly lined up as you typed it.
TAB doesn't help as much as it should, for reasons I won't go into.
Different systems translate it differently. The guys who wear glasses
as thick as coke bottle bottoms worry about that kind of stuff, late
at night when the rest of us are eating something that DOESN'T come
from a vending machine.
----- Original Message -----
From: Shirley J Cleveland <shirl(a)linkny.com>
<...>
This is the third time I have tried to post this but when it comes
back it
is not lined up neatly as I typed it. You should be able to make it
out
okay. Any problem let me know .
Name age Date Father Mother
Spouse Town
Mary J Cady / 18 / 3-25-1910 / Charles Cady / Mette Cornish / Elwell
/ Troopsburg, NY