Years in vital records

By mawyn on Fri, 03/31/2023 - 11:41

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On page EE 458, "9.33 County-level Certificates" there are four example sources, two from Alabama and one each from Florida and Montana. The example reference notes for the Florida and Montana place the year in parentheses. The example reference notes for Perry County, Alabama specify the year "1908", but the year is not placed in parentheses. The example reference notes for Bibb County, Alabama don't mention a year at all.

It is my understanding that placing the years in parentheses is done for published works, the year being part of the publication information. Thus it looks like the Florida and Montana sources are being treated as published. Is that correct?

The Perry County, Alabama example specifies a year but parentheses are not used. Does that mean this source is considered unpublished? If that is the case, why not?

The Bibb County, Alabama example doesn't explicitly mention a year. It looks like this death certificate is from 1908 and has the certificate number "1908-28". Is the year perhaps not specified separately because that information is in the certificate number?

Submitted byEEon Fri, 03/31/2023 - 20:26

Hello, Mawyn. Short answer: no.  Now for the long answer:

When a citation places a date in parentheses, that does not mean the source is published. In most style guides, published works are distinguished from unpublished works by the use of italics for the title of the work. The titles of all standalone publications, in almost every citation style, will appear in italics.  (EE 2.22, 2.36 offers more.)  Manuscript titles never appear in italics. Citations to publications will also include other publication data because no work can be adequately identified by simply stating a year it was published.

Parentheses have many functions within the written language. In almost all applications, a parenthetical expression serves as a modifier that further explains what came immediately before it. Among the various ways that we see them used in citations, two usages do involve publication dates:

  • In Scientific Style citations, which uses in-text citations, a reference to an authored work will say, for example, “Smith (2019) reports that …”  Or a statement may be made without attributing it to anyone specifically and then the parenthetical citation will say (Smith 2019). That cryptic notation tells readers to look at the Source List at the end of the paper where they will find full details for the work that Smith wrote/published/presented in 2019.  But note: the work does not have to be published.   (That said, genealogists do not use Scientific Style citations because that style accommodates only authored works that are simple to cite, and are totally inadequate for citing historical records.)
  • Humanities Style citations, which allow reference notes to be as explicit as needed, will put all publication data inside parentheses when citing books—e.g.:  (Publication Place:  Publisher, Year). For websites, we use (Publication Place = URL : Date). For journals, we would use (Month/Season Year) without a publication place.

Humanities Style citations also use parentheses in other ways. As examples:

Citing a courthouse register, EE 9.34:

“Ottawa County, Ohio, Record of Births, vol. 1 (1867–1890): 4 ...

In this case, the parenthetical dates modify vol. 1, telling us that volume 1 covers the years 1867 through 1890. The presence of parentheses around those dates does not mean that the courthouse volume is published.

Citing census pages, EE 6.28:

“1880 U.S. census, City of St. Louis, Missouri, population schedule (1st enumeration), enumeration district (ED) 1, p. 1 (stamped), p. 3A (penned), dwelling 16, family 17, Nick Metzen ...

Explanations:

  • The parenthetical "1st enumeration" modifies what comes before it: population schedule. It tells us that there were multiple population enumerations that year and that the first one is the one used. 
  • Placing the acronym ED in parentheses is the standard convention for informing readers that the phrase will hereinafter be abbreviated as ED. (EE 2.45, 2.57)
  • When a census citation cites “p. 1 (stamped),” that parenthetical addition tells us that there are various numbering schemes on the cited page and that we should look for a page 1 whose number is stamped, rather than penned or penciled, etc. (ED 6.8)

You are specifically asking about county level certificates and cite EE 9.33.  As you read on to EE 9.35, you’ll find this explanation:

CITING DATE OF CERTIFICATE

Typically, as with Note 1, when you cite the year of the certificate you can simply place that date in parentheses after the number.

Clarity is the issue—the avoidance of confusion.  Let’s look specifically at the note 4 that you reference on p. 458:

            4. “Yellowstone County, Montana, marriage certificate no. 2995 (1910), Ferguson-Webb; District Court Clerk’s Office, Billings.

If we remove the parentheses and just string together everything with a series of commas, we’d have this:

4. “Yellowstone County, Montana, marriage certificate no. 2995, 1910, Ferguson-Webb; District Court Clerk’s Office, Billings.

What if we were citing certificate no. 1909 from that year? Using commas, we’d have this:

4. “Yellowstone County, Montana, marriage certificate no. 1909, 1910, Ferguson-Webb; District Court Clerk’s Office, Billings.

Could we expect a reader to understand that 1909 represents one thing, but 1910 represents something else?

In the interest of clarity, writers try to never present two separate numbers in a row, separated by commas, when each of them represent something different.  By putting the year 1910 in parentheses, as a modifier of no. 2995, we are saying that this certificate no. 2995 is from the year 1910.

This is also addressed at various other points in EE where similar situations arise.  For example EE 11.51:

CITING THE DATE OR YEAR

Most examples in this manual use the standard comma to separate the elements that describe a document. However, as in the Russell example above, when a large number is immediately followed by a year, using a standard comma to separate the two would create a confusing sequence: 1,261,167, 1918. Putting the year in parentheses avoids that.