I would like to vary the marriage fact sentence when someone marries more than once. Rather than repeating the same wording for each marriage, I would like to write something like “She married again [2nd husband] …” or something similar. To do this RM would need to recognise that a first marriage fact, or spouse role, exists with an earlier date. Can anyone please suggest how I might be able to do this? Thanks.
There is not an automated way to do what you seek, but here are some ideas.
- You could create new facts such as Marriage2 and Marriage3 which include the desired text in their sentence definitions. I wouldn’t recommend this approach because any software that looks for things like marriage dates as clues for children’s birth dates or even as clues for the spouses birth dates wouldn’t recognize that these alternate marriage facts were actually marriage facts. And even within RM, it would mean that a search for everybody married in Missouri would miss those couples whose Marriage2 or Marriage3 facts were in Missouri.
- You can customize the sentence for any particular fact for any particular person to read any way you wish. So you could customize each second and third marriage sentence manually. It would not be automatic, but it would be a solution. One possible disadvantage is that software other than RM might not recognize your sentence customization. This matters for some RM users and not for others. Another possible disadvantage is that there is what I consider a bug in RM’s support for sentence customization tool. Namely, if you ever use manual sentence customization for a fact you can never go back to not having the sentence customized manually. I’m not sure if RM itself accepts that this is a bug.
Steve–best way in my opinion to do this UNLESS you have a lot is to customize the fact after you create it—keep in mind that since marriage is a couple’s fact, what you do to one shows up on the other–so once the fact is created, use the following fact sentence
[Person:Given] [Person:Surname]<% who was the 2nd husband of | and her 2nd husband>< [Spouse:Given:Surname]> were married <[Date]> < [PlaceDetails]>< [Place]>.
In a narrative report, his fact will read like this:
Sam Know who was the 2nd husband of Sue Acorn were married in 1899 at St Mary’s Parish in London, Middlesex Co., England.
In a narrative report, her fact will read like this:
Sue Acorn and her 2nd husband Sam Know were married in 1899 at St Mary’s Parish in London, Middlesex Co., England
Customize the fact under the person you are primarily interested in-- the person you are somehow related to such as grandpa/grandma and their new spouse.
Basically any changes you make such as # of marriage or wife instead of hubby would be in this part---- who was the 2nd husband of | and her 2nd husband.
If both were married twice and you wanted to record that also, I would add <[desc]> in there ( making sure that description is checked in the main marriage fact) and add that info there.
[Person:Given] [Person:Surname]<% who was the 2nd husband of | and her 2nd husband>< [Spouse:Given:Surname]> were married <[Date]> < [PlaceDetails]>< [Place]>. <[desc]>.
So now both will have a sentence at the end that reads like this
Sam Know who was the 2nd husband of Sue Acorn were married in 1899 at St Mary’s Parish in London, Middlesex Co., England. This was also a 2nd marriage for Sam Know.
Just play with it to get it how you want and if you figure out a better way for the hubby to say Sam Know who was the 2nd husband of Sue Acorn were married , please let me know as I would be interested
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Thank you for your suggestions. Nancy, you got me thinking and I’ve come up with the sentence below. To deal with the 2nd, 3rd etc marriage I decided the simplest thing to do is to just use the Description field to write what I want.
I’m always looking for ways of making the narrative less repetitive and easier to read so I’ve also tried to vary it a bit depending on whether I know the person’s age when he/she married. In this particular case, I know when the bride (Thea) was born, and her first husband (Richard), but I don’t have a birth date for her second husband (George).
My sentence is :
[Person:Casual]<?[Person:Age] | had married | married >[Spouse:Casual:Surname][Spouse:Age:Commas]< [Date:InOn]>< [PlaceDetails]>< [Place]><?[Person:Age] | when [Person:HeShe] was [Person:Age:Plain] years old. |. [Person:Caps:HisHer] age at the time is unknown.>< [Desc].>
What it gives me is :
In the bride’s Narrative Report, for her first marriage :
Thea had married Richard JENNER-FUST, age 26, on 28 June 1940 at St Mary Abbots Church in Kensington, London when she was 20 years old.
And for her second marriage :
Thea had married George SPOONER in June Quarter 1951 in Kensington, London when she was 31 years old. He was her second husband.
In the Narrative Report for her first husband :
Richard had married Thea WILMER, age 20, on 28 June 1940 at St Mary Abbots Church in Kensington, London when he was 26 years old.
And in her second husband’s Narrative Report :
George married Thea WILMER, age 31, in June Quarter 1951 in Kensington, London. His age at the time is unknown. He was her second husband.
This single sentence avoids the need for a Marriage2 custom fact (for the reasons Jerry suggested) and seems to work (I think) but I’m not totally sure why! The definition of who is [Person] and who is [Spouse] seems to vary. Is that because Marriage is a family/couple fact rather than an individual fact, or is it just me being thick at the end of a long day?
Please do let me know if you can see any problems I’ve missed. Thank you.
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My solution to that problem is to use point form sentences. See an example at Sample RM RM Narrative Report with Point Form Sentences
Looks great to me BUT will check it out later in the week to see how it works on one of mine-- and yes the person and spouse varies BECAUSE it is a COUPLE"S FACT— so what you do for one will show up in the other UNLESS you compensate for it-- which you did and which I did by adding the part <% who was the 2nd husband of | and her 2nd husband>–otherwise on mine hers was write and his was wrong…