Sentence template question

RootsMagic
1

Hi! I’ve got a sentence template issue I can’t figure out.

I’ve created a custom fact for “event with honoree” with multiple possible roles. The sentence template I created almost works:

[person]< and [other honoree]> were honored< at a [Desc]>< [Date]>< [PlaceDetails]>< [Place]>.< [attendee] attended.>

My question is: how do I make it so that “were” becomes “was” if there’s no “other honoree”?

Thanks!

2

You’ll need to use Switches.

Here’s the help article on the Sentence template language. Read that over and, if it doesn’t help you solve your challenge, c’mon back :wink:

1 Like
3

In particular, look for “plural switches” in the documentation.

1 Like
4

Thanks! I did look at the switches, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it work with two different roles - it looked like all the examples were for a single role.

5

The plural switch is not designed for your exact situation. Rather, it’s designed to detect whether [other honeree] is plural or not. I suspect that is what you already discovered. The only solution I can think of right now is something like the following.

[person] was honored. [other honeree] was/were also honored.

Sorry, but I have not taken the time chase down the exact syntax of the plural switch. But what happens is that the [other honeree] can be assigned to more than one person. In that case, the [other honoree] variable expands to be all the [other honeree] people even though the [other honoree] variable only appears once. Then you can use the plural switch to pick between “was” and “were”. But again, that’s not your situation, and I can’t think of a very graceful solution for your exact sitution.

6

That’s helpful, thanks! I’ll rewrite the sentence to eliminate the issue. It won’t be quite as elegant, but at least it will be grammatically correct!

7

I’ve used nested switching before. But it requires some programmer-like thinking to get the logic down and the sentence code can look pretty hairy.

8

Would this not work?

[person] <?[other honoree]|and [other honoree] were|was> honored< at a [Desc]>< [Date]>< [PlaceDetails]>< [Place]>.< [attendee] attended.>
1 Like
9

It does look like it to me.

10
<?[other honoree]|<?[person]|[person] and [other honoree] were honored|[other honoree] was honored>|<?[person]| [person] was honored|No one was honored>> Try it with your data David blank lines lost - apologies