* Allow Report sentences to recognise Individuals who are Living.

[JohnB47]

Currently, certain auto generated Report sentences describe all individuals in the past tense, e.g. "Joe Bloggs was the son of Fred Blogs and Mary Smith".

My suggestion is for these sentences to be constructed differently for those individuals whose Record Flag is set to 'Living' so that the sentences would read e.g. "Joe Bloggs is the son of Fred Blogs and Mary Smith".

[Woodg]

I would support this.

[LornaCraig]

This seems a reasonable request but I don’t know how easy it would be to implement, or whether CP would feel it worth their while as there are ways round the problem.

As far as I know (I stand to be corrected) the format "Joe Bloggs was the son of Fred Bloggs and Mary Smith" only arises if no other information has been recorded about the individual. For example if a date or place of birth has been recorded the words “was the” are removed from “was the son of ...” and the narrative reads ”"Joe Bloggs, son of Fred Blogs and Mary Smith, was born on … in …” which is correct in the past tense. In the case of people who are still living it is usually possible to find a birth date or place, so recording one of these avoids the problem.

There are some fact types where the past tense would not be appropriate if no end date has been recorded for the fact, for example residence or occupation. But the user can edit the fact sentence on a case by case basis to allow for this. For example the default sentence “From 2010 he was a teacher” could be edited to read “Since 2010 he has been a teacher.”

[tatewise]

When child facts do exist then the report wording is "He and Mary Smith had the following children:" which can be wrong on two counts.
1) If the parents are alive it should say "have" not "had".
2) If there is only one child it should say "child" not "children".

[ColeValleyGirl]

We're getting into the realms where narrative sentences will never be good enough.

What about when one parent is living and one is not?

What about when two of the children are alive and one isnt?

What tense is appropriate then?

[LornaCraig]

When child facts do exist then the report wording is "He and Mary Smith had the following children:" which can be wrong on two counts.
1) If the parents are alive it should say "have" not "had".
2) If there is only one child it should say "child" not "children".

Edit: Helen's post came in while I was writing this. We make the same points!

Mike, I agree with your second point, but the first is debatable on two counts.
Firstly, suppose a couple had three children but one died in infancy, They no longer have three children, only two. But they had three.
Secondly, suppose one of the parents has died. In your example if the father is still alive but Mary Smith has died, does it make sense to say '" He and Mary Smith have the following children? He has, but she had.

[tatewise]

Perhaps the solution is to rephrase those sentences something like this:
"Fred Blogs and Mary Smith are the parents of Joe Bloggs."
"Fred Blogs and Mary Smith are the parents of the following:"

[LornaCraig]

That still doesn’t work if one of the parents is alive and the other is not. Nor does it work if one of the children has died.

“The following children were born to Fred Blogs and Mary Smith” is the best I can come up with, as it has no implications about whether all or any of them are still living.

However as I said in my first reply I think the OP’s original problem can be addressed by adding a birth fact with date and/or place for the individual, and for other facts the default sentence can be overridden on a case by case basis.

[tatewise]

I like that wording Lorna, as long as it says "child was" when only one child instead of "children were".

A similar sentence revision would resolve the OP specific sentence when there are no child facts, e.g.
"Joe Bloggs was born to Fred Blogs and Mary Smith."

[LornaCraig]

I have now realised that there is a problem with the “… was/were born to…” format. It would be completely wrong in cases of adoption, where Fred Blogs and Mary Smith are the adopting parents. Admittedly even the “had the following children“ format is slightly misleading but is sufficiently ambiguous not to be a complete lie. As Helen said, we are entering the realm where narrative sentences will never be good enough. On reflection I think the existing format “had the following children” may be the best compromise.

However I agree that the child/children issue should be resolved.

BTW as I’m sure you know, I’m Lorna not Laura

[tatewise]

Sorry Lorna, I have been dealing with two other Laura's so that name was ingrained in my mind.

Perhaps a solution would be to allow those sentences to be customised in a similar way to most other narrative sentences and let the user choose the wording based on conditions such as adoption and whether the people are living or not. CP are the final arbiters of any solution.

Any Wish List entry could identify the problem with the wording and perhaps suggest possible solutions.

[LornaCraig]

There is already a wish list request for narrative reports to adjust in a case where a couple had only one child: https://www.fhug.org.uk/wishlist/wldisp ... lwlref=366

Therefore I think the current request should concentrate on the OP’s wish for sentences to be phrased in the present tense when an individual is still living. (The request could of course refer to the one about the number of children, as the solution might solve both problems.)

How does this sound as a draft:

Issue:
Narrative reports refer to all individuals in the past tense. When an individual is still living this is inappropriate in many contexts. The user can override the default sentences for some facts in individual cases (for example “from 2010 he was a teacher” could be edited to become ‘’since 2010 he has been a teacher”). However there are two types of sentence which are not under the user’s control. These are:

1. When individual’s parents are known but there are no other facts recorded about the person FH generates a sentence in the format "Joe Bloggs was the son of Fred Bloggs and Mary Smith", in the past tense. (If any fact has been recorded about the person the words “was the” are removed from “was the son of ...” and the narrative reads “Joe Bloggs, son of Fred Blogs and Mary Smith, was …” where the past tense may be appropriate if the first fact is an event such as birth or baptism.)

2. When an individual’s or couple’s children are listed, FH generates a sentence in the format “Fred Bloggs and Mary Smith had the following children”. If the parents are both still alive this is slightly odd, but the preferred wording will depend on whether all the children are still alive. The user may also prefer the wording to be changed if any of the children were adopted by the named parents.

The first problem might be solved by including a Report Option to use the present tense if the Living flag is set on the individual. However the second problem is more complex.

Proposal:

The format of these two types of sentence should be customisable in a similar way to most other narrative sentences, to allow the user choose the exact wording.

This would also provide a solution to the problem raised in another Wish List request https://www.fhug.org.uk/wishlist/wldisp ... lwlref=366
which asks for the word “child” to be used instead of “children” when a couple had/have only one child.

[tatewise]

Excellent. That looks good to me.
I wonder what the OP JohnB47 thinks as he has not taken part in the discussion?

[JohnB47]

Thanks Mike and everyone else taking part in this.

Yes, I have been very interested to read the various comments - I didn't realise that there were so many ramifications to my suggestion.

In my particular case, I've now realised that the individual records concerned do not have any birth details at all. (Actually one has but I've made the birth Fact private). This is because I created those entries some time ago, being those people who are all still living and I didn't want to enter any birth details as I wasn't sure about the process and effect of sharing the tree on Ancestry. I've since found that you can make entries Private on Ancestry Trees and/or the program automatically makes entries Private for people who are living. Also I haven't fully checked out, with my brothers and sisters, that they are happy with me recording birth dates and address for all the living people - especially nephews and nieces.

Anyway, I think my suggestion is a reasonable one and Lorna's solution certainly seems a good one to me. I like the idea of the program constructing a sentence but allowing me to modify it myself.

I don't know what's required of me now but I'd certainly support Lorna's solution as the one to put forward.

Thanks again everyone.