26 April 2014 Church registers deal with many different types of events. In churches that record the administration of sacraments, registers may be specifically set aside ...

24 April 2014 What are the two unbreakable rules for citing vital records--and why do they matter?

23 April 2014
No. That's not a typo. It's a principle of common law we encounter in historical documents more often than we realize. The problem is: we seldom see that label on the situations that invoke it. Not recognizing it ...

22 April 2014 Thomas Mann wrote essays, novels, and short stories. He did it well enough to become a Nobel laureate. He also wrote: "A writer is ...

21 April 2014 Successful research is reliable research. It is not achieved by querying the Internet for names, by using indexes and databases as though they were actual records, or by accepting uncritically whatever conclusions others tout. It ...

20 April 2014 Rules for classic expository writing tell us that reference note numbers should be placed at the end of sentences or the end of paragraphs, outside the closing punctuation mark. However, that classic rule will mislead our readers—and us at a later date—if ...

19 April 2014
When we cite pension records from the U.S. National Archives, our citation of the number should not omit ...

18 April 2014 The New York Public Library “has now scanned nearly all of its public domain New York City atlases (a collection of now more than 10,000 maps) … and built a web tool … where users both inside and outside the Library can virtually stretch old maps onto a digital model of the world ...

17 April 2014
Just how are we supposed to write an author's name in a source citation? The answer, as usual, is: It depends....