Hello,
I agree with Terry.
Often what we do informally winds up becoming part of the record when we
forget to remove the informal. Then the informal is carried forward as
formal.
For example, I used the title "Captain" for the immigrant, William Carpenter
(b. 1605 England) for many years to tell him from the other immigrant named
William Carpenter (b. 1608-1611). That was wrong and I changed it.
John R. Carpenter
La Mesa, CA
----- Original Message -----
From: "Terry Carpenter" <diluvius(a)yahoo.com>
To: <carpenter(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2007 4:08 PM
Subject: Re: [CARPENTER] vol 2, issue 97
I hate to keep having to say this, but it keeps
coming up, and if nobody corrects it, people
don't learn from it, so it must be said --
alot of the researchers do put
in the Coles as the maiden
name for the mother to keep all the Joseph
Carpenters straight.
It is still _wrong_. It misleads people. It
compromises the accuracy of their information.
It diminishes their search for the truth -- and
that affects all of us.
If the name is supposed to be the mother's maiden
surname, state that separately. If the audience
is experienced enough to understand professional
annotations and the communication medium supports
the formatting, clearly indicate it is a maiden
name, but don't just stick it in the middle with
no annotation or differentiation -- people who
aren't experienced don't know that it's not a
middle name, and then it gets repeated as though
it were a middle name, like they did in the
original post, where there was _no_ annotation
that it was _not_ a middle name and it was
clearly being _misrepresented_ as a middle name!
If we don't set and uphold a reasonable standard
for truth and accuracy, we will wind up with a
lot more junk genealogy than we already --
unfortunately -- have to deal with.
Terry Carpenter