* Change one specific instance of a sentence in a narrative report

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Peter Collier
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Change one specific instance of a sentence in a narrative report

Post by Peter Collier »

I have a person in my tree who was conceived as a result of a sexual assault. The father is a known individual, so there is a family record in my tree linking him to the child and the mother and its status is set to never married.

In a narrative report I have generated (ancestors by generation) I get the following sentence for the child's parents:
John DOE, son of James DOE and Jane ROE, had a relationship with Mary POE.

I would like to change the sentence for that one specific "couple" so that it will always read something other than "had a relationship" in any narrative report I may generate with them in it. However, I can't find the sentence template for it anywhere. There don't seem to be any sentences associated with the marriage status, it's not the sentence for the child's birth, and of course there is no marriage event for the parents.

Does anyone know where I can find the standard sentence for that one "relationship" and create a override just for those two particular individuals?
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Re: Change one specific instance of a sentence in a narrative report

Post by tatewise »

There is no Sentence Template for that phrase. It is built into the FH narrative report writer.

I tried experimenting with a special Language Pack to perform a translation, as I've got that to work in some cases, but not for this special case. It will translate all cases of had a relationship with but not just that particular one.

I then experimented with Privacy options.
I set the Private record flag on John DOE and also on Mary POE.
Then in the Report > Options > Privacy tab ticked Show basic details only for Individuals where this flag is set: Private
The relationship between John and Mary is then not mentioned.

Another solution is to Save the Report As a PDF or RTF format file and edit that saved file.
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Re: Change one specific instance of a sentence in a narrative report

Post by RS3100 »

If it helps, I have done something similar with several individuals in my file, following similar guidance from Mike, originally AFAIR when I wished to suppress a similar report generated sentence for a relationship fact.

For an apparently illegitimate ancestor, whose father is unknown and entered in FH as "Unknown father of Fred SMITH", by setting a private record flag against him and changing the Report Options Privacy tab setting as Mike suggests, I get the sentence "Mary JONES had the following children" in narrative reports.

In the birth fact for the child, I added a free text note explaining that no father was recorded at the registration of the birth, and his identity is unknown, etc. By ticking the option to include Event/Attr. notes in the report options, or editing the relevant fact sentence to include or consist solely of the note, I find the result in narrative reports quite satisfactory.
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Re: Change one specific instance of a sentence in a narrative report

Post by AdrianBruce »

I wouldn't argue with any of the above but would caution that, as always, it makes sense to have a look at specific instances and ponder whether they come over in the best possible fashion. For instance...
Screenshot 2021-11-20 204212.jpg
Screenshot 2021-11-20 204212.jpg (21.17 KiB) Viewed 2505 times
In this case, Tamar (I always like that name!) had three children with an unknown person, then she married John Williamson. The unknown person has a Private Flag set and the report ticks the option "Omit all references to Individuals flagged 'Private'"

At first glance at the report (and I haven't experimented deeply) the three children could belong to John Williamson - which they could, of course, it's just that there's no evidence for it.

So, where a person has two relationships, one unknown and suppressed by privacy options, followed by one known, you may need to do a bit of experimentation to come up with something satisfactory. I confess that I have not done that here, not least because there are a number of possibilities unique to each case.
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Re: Change one specific instance of a sentence in a narrative report

Post by tatewise »

I tried that option too, but it seemed to omit more than Peter wanted. However, it is worth trying.
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Re: Change one specific instance of a sentence in a narrative report

Post by LornaCraig »

Adrian, The OP's case is slightly different in that the father is not an 'unknown'. He is known and has been entered in FH. The problem is not that the sentence mentioning him needs to be supressed completely but that the OP wants it to say something other than "had a relationship".

So instead of "John DOE, son of James DOE and Jane ROE, had a relationship with Mary POE" it would be more appropriate to say "John DOE, son of James DOE and Jane ROE, fathered a child with Mary POE."

Sadly I don't think there is any way of adjusting that.
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Re: Change one specific instance of a sentence in a narrative report

Post by AdrianBruce »

LornaCraig wrote: 20 Nov 2021 21:55 Adrian, The OP's case is slightly different in that the father is not an 'unknown'. He is known and has been entered in FH. The problem is not that the sentence mentioning him needs to be supressed completely but that the OP wants it to say something other than "had a relationship". ...
That's a fair point - I was actually responding to RS3100's scenario, which did involve an unknown. I'd experimented but found that my first examples of women with unknown fathers had all gone on to marry a known person later. This seemed to produce printed results that might be thought to be less than optimal, and I thought it useful to raise it.

As for the OP's scenario, I wonder whether this is a case for a modification to FH to have another "marriage status", intended to be used for cases such as sexual assault where you don't want any mention of words like "relationship"...?
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Re: Change one specific instance of a sentence in a narrative report

Post by NickiP »

To remove the "had a relationship with" from the reports you could add a marriage fact for the couple but then edit the sentence for that particular fact replacing the standard template with {note} then leave the note field for that fact empty. It will then not say anything about the relationship in the reports.

If one or other of them went on to have another relationship, it would probably be wise to put a date on the Fact for ordering purposes but this won't then show up in the narrative reports either because the sentence template refers to the note field and that is blank.

Granted you may not want to create a marriage fact for the couple but it would remove the issue in narrative reports and only be visible in Family Historian. If you use other types of reports in FH, it may well show. I've not tested that as I don't tend to use anything other than narrative reports.
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Re: Change one specific instance of a sentence in a narrative report

Post by RS3100 »

I think I would set the private flag against he individual concerned and exclude him from the report as Mike has indicated.

A couple of options then occur to me which I have used several times and can achieve satisfactory results with a bit of experimentation in placement and formatting etc.

One is a custom Misc Event fact, and idea which I think I cribbed from a previous post by Adrian, which simply contains a free text note about anything and in any form desired. With careful formatting, it can be made to appear similar to the auto-generated narrative text that you wish to replace, but will need a bit of experimentation to determine its best position in the list of facts for the mother, so that it appears in the desired place in the report.

Another possibility would be to edit the fact sentence for the child's birth, either to include the contents of a free text note at the end of the sentence, or to edit the sentence directly, to read as desired.

So you might have a short paragraph in the narrative report for the mother, naming the father of the child and explaining his relationship to her as you require, plus the circumstances.

Then, where the report says, "Mary POE had the following children:" because the father has been hidden, a custom edited fact sentence for the relevant child's birth could say something like:

John DOE (18nn-19nn). John was born on date at place. The father was/is believed to have been (Private INDIVIDUAL) and (free text explanation of the situation as desired).

If a free text Misc Event custom fact can't be persuaded to generate an acceptable result, attaching the desired text as a note to another existing fact in the mother's record and editing the fact sentence to append the note within the report may work better.

I have fairly recently done something similar with a child whose father was unknown, suppressing any automatic mention of the father in the report with the private flag to avoid text such as [unknown father of Thomas SMITH] and Hannah JONES had the following children, and editing the child's birth and baptism fact sentences in conjunction with notes attached to the facts. The text reads as in the attachment.

Report text.JPG
Report text.JPG (141.21 KiB) Viewed 2444 times
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Re: Change one specific instance of a sentence in a narrative report

Post by LornaCraig »

It's clear from this discussion that there are various approaches to the problem, some more convoluted than others. However I think we can assume that Peter (a) doesn't want to hide the identity of the father and (b) is certain of the identity of the father. He has the names of the father's parents and may also have traced the family further back than that.

In his original post Peter says that he is working with an Ancestors by Generation narrarive report. In the context of an Ancestors by Generation report it doesn't make sense to hide the individual's identity because that would entail also hiding the identites of all of the individual's ancestors.

In this situation I think the most appropriate solution, as well as the simplest, is to use a variant of NickiP's idea. Create a marriage fact for the couple and edit the sentence for that particular fact replacing the standard template with {note} . But instead of leaving the note blank, use the note for whatever form of sentence you want to appear in reports. As NickiP says, it would be advisable to give the fact a date (approximate date when the assault took place) so that it is listed in correct chronologial order compared with other facts including other relationships. It might seem counter-intuitive to create a marriage fact for a couple who were not married but the word 'marriage' won't appear in the narrative reports. Just think of it as an event which took place involving the two people.
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Re: Change one specific instance of a sentence in a narrative report

Post by Peter Collier »

Thanks for all the responses. There's lots there to consider and experiment with.

Lorna's first response picked up on precisely my issue, it's not that I want the father (and his ancestors, of which there are several generations' worth) hidden from my tree - on the contrary, I want as many direct ancestors as possible to be documented - it is just that I find the word "relationship" objectionable in this one particular circumstance. As Lorna suggested, something along the lines of Mr fathered a child with Ms or Ms had a child by Mr would be vastly preferable.

The easiest way may be, as someone suggested, to enter a dummy marriage event and edit the text for that. I had considered that workaround but shied away from entering junk information into the database (a) on principle and (b) in case it is misinterpreted by anyone else working on this in years to come afterI have long-since fallen off my perch. Perhaps if I add an explanatory note it will be OK.

The father was, I think, married elsewhere at the time (I'm still looking into that one), but presumably his conflicting/overlapping "marriage" dates wouldn't cause any issues?
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Re: Change one specific instance of a sentence in a narrative report

Post by ColeValleyGirl »

If like me you don't like entering junk data would you consider a custom family event instead?
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Re: Change one specific instance of a sentence in a narrative report

Post by tatewise »

I have a custom Family fact called Liaison for just that sort of purpose.
If necessary its local specific Sentence Template can be reworded as needed.
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Re: Change one specific instance of a sentence in a narrative report

Post by LornaCraig »

Helen, wouldn't custom family event still leave the original problem? FH would still generate the default "relationship" sentence, in the absence of a marriage event.

At the very least there would need to be a marriage event with no date or place and an empty note, with a sentence template of {note}, to supress that sentence. I don't think there is any way round that. Given that the marriage event would have to be created, personally I would record the circumstances in the marriage note field. Then if anyone sees the marriage event in the gedcom they will probably see the note. An additional custom family event might go unnoticed.
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Re: Change one specific instance of a sentence in a narrative report

Post by tatewise »

Lorna, FH only uses the 'had a relationship' wording when there are no Family facts.
As soon as a fact is added it uses the Family fact Sentence Template. Try it and you will see.
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Re: Change one specific instance of a sentence in a narrative report

Post by LornaCraig »

Ah, that's interesting. I always thought it was dependent on the absence of a marriage fact. (Probably because if there is no marriage fact I never have any family fact at all!)
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