On Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:22:27 -0700, Don Kirkman <donsgenes@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
>It seems to me I heard somewhere that Steve Hayes wrote in article
><8ull74l0umuh5oaasr222ik38pa9oif0rl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>:
>
>>On Sat, 12 Jul 2008 18:59:35 -0700, "D. Stussy" <spam@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
>
>>>The announcement should probably have said which COUNTRY and region
this was
>>>in - instead of us having to guess it from the e-mail address that was
>>>included.
>
>>Sorry, I'm getting as bad as the Americans, who hardly ever think to
include
>>that information.
>
>Note my just posted message confessing to same. :-)
It generally doesn't bother me too much (I did learn geography at school),
and
when I worked as an editor we used to have arguments about how to record
the
place of publication in bibliographies, and eventually opted for the
postal
abbreviations of US states (eg PA rather then Penn), but I still have to
look
up some of those that don't have major publishers in them. I know that AK
is
Alaska, but I can't think of the one for Arkansas offhand.
And then there are all the countries whose boundaries or other things have
changed since I left school. I can't remember off the top of my head what
is
the capital of Belarus of Burkino Faso. When I hear news about Caucasian
countries I have only a very vague idea of whether they are independent or
part of some larger entity, or where they are in relation to each other -
yes,
I know Chechnya is in Russia and Georgia is independent, but Dagestan,
Ossetia
and some of the others I have to look on a map every time.
And so in international genealogy newsgroups, it's always advisable to be
more
specific. In soc.genealogy.britain I assume that a place is in Britain
unless
otherwise stated, and in soc.genealogy.ireland I assume it is in Ireland,
but
in general ones like soc.genealogy.misc and alt.genealogy it is better to
be
specific, where possible.
The "Genealogical Research Directory", which was published in Australia
for
about 20 years, had useful lists of abbreviations for countries and
regions,
which I've tried to use in recording my own family history, and I use them
for
looking up unfamiliar ones. But I've noticed that many US genealogists
rarely,
if ever, put "USA" in names of places within the USA. Not a good practice.
--
Steve Hayes
Web: http://hayesgreene.wordpress.com/
http://hayesfam.bravehost.com/famhist1.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7783/
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