- Re-read FIELDS every now and
then. You think you
know what it says... It's too easy to invent
your own County Codes, for example.
- Check these easily confused placenames: take an
extra second to make sure which one is in front of you...
Hastings and Harting
Eastbourne and Easebourne
Worthing and Wartling
Lindfield (SSX) and Lingfield (SRY)
Walberton and Warbleton
Lullington and Sullington
Alciston and Alfriston
- Ignore statisticians' remarks. Sometimes there are
additional notes, comment or corrections in handwriting that's
different from the enumerator's. Ignore them; we need to know what the original entry says.
- Beware of Auto Complete. Excel and some other
spreadsheets will automatically repeat a previous entry in the
column. They're just trying to be helpful, but make sure this
entry is the same as the
previous one. It may have been "Mary Jane" before, but only "Mary J"
this time!
- Beware of empty buildings. The enumerator doesn't
always put "U" in his entry, but if a church, warehouse, school or
similar has no-one living in it, you can safely give it a "U".
Don't forget it will also need a schedule number. Use zero if
there isn't one given.
- Notice that families can share an address. The
enumerator puts a single slash (/) between households, and a double
slash (//) between buildings. Every household between one // and the
next therefore should be given the same address, even though the
enumerator will only write it once.
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- Overflow the set column width; keep to the length
allowed in line 3. Abbreviation is often necessary, especially in the
occupation column.
- Spend too long on an entry. If you can't decipher
the entry after a minute or so just flag it, move on, and let your
checker
have a go!
- Expand abbreviations or correct spellings. The
child may really be called
Lousia Smiith from Brigton. The "as is" rule is our aim!
- Forget the defaults. Name, gender and birthplace
columns need a hyphen if there's no information given. For the county
it's UNK and for age it's 999.
- Mistake ticks for House Numbers. Most houses outside the big
towns don't have numbers in 1871. If they do they'll be in the
Address column along with the road name. The mark in the HOUSES column
on the enumerator's sheet is a tick to mark a new dwelling.
Ignore it.
- Double-up a query. There's no need to put "County
not given" if you've already put UNK for example, or "schedule not
used" if there's already an N. "OVB" means you don't need to add
"British Subject".
- Repeat a query. If the surname or address has a
query there's no need to repeat it for everyone in the family - just
once for the first person in the schedule.
- Work down the page. It may be tempting to fill in a
column at a time (just for a change) but it's very easy to line up the
details against the wrong names, and can give the checker a lot of
extra work.
- Repeat address info on a new page. Each household
needs the schedule number and address just once, against the first
person in the household (usually the Head). If the household continues
over to the next page you may find details there. Don't repeat them,
but if necessary add them to the Head's entry.
- Include full stops.
They take up space and can confuse the search routine. So MRCP, RN, St
Mary, Robt, Elizth, Ag Lab etc should be entered without full stops.
- Lose sleep over it! Most of these are minor points,
easily corrected by your checker. Don't spend too long worrying
about them - we'd rather you got on and finished your piece!
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