G2G: "Say" is a "term of art"

Question

I recently saw an edit where the expression, "he was born in, say, 1750" was changed to "he was born in about 1750."

In my use of language, "about" means, "I have a fair idea of when this person was born, and it was probably within a few years of 1750."

On the other hand, "say" means, "I have no evidence of this person's birth, but let's guess 1750 and see if it fits with other events associated with this person."  

Purists, of course, blanch at guesswork in genealogy, but in the absence of other evidence, it's useful to put a person in the right century or even decade.  But if one is going to guess, one needs to be clear that is what one is doing, and I've copied other genealogical writers in using the word "say" in this way.    

The edit mentioned above has the effect of changing a guess to an approximation, which should not be done without a citation confirming that greater level of confidence!

Comments

It comes off as too casual to me, something like "I don't really care if this is accurate or not, but lets throw 1750 in there and see if it sticks."

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It comes off as written exactly as the author intended to me. With the understanding that the author has arrived at the grey zone of that genealogical trail (every trail has one) and has left their best notes for the next adventurer. 

Assuming that this author has spent time and effort to arrive at that grey zone, I would want to read the author's notes exactly as they were intended. 

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When I don't really have a clue about birth year, I usually write "X was born, roughly estimated, about 1750." I could of course have used "say" as you do, but I feel that it's better to write out in clear text that it's a rough estimate.

I could of course have included the {{Estimated Date}} template, but I just can't stand those big, yellow banners.

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I have often seen this term used in genealogical publications, including by well known, respected genealogists.

If you have a stated age in a dated document you can calculate a birthdate. For this, I like to use “about.”

If you have a dated document, such as a marriage record, and know that a woman’s first marriage at that time was often at 15-20 years of age, you can calculate a birthdate date. For this, I like to use “estimate” and a range.

When there is more uncertainty, and I have some information, perhaps another estimated (or about or calculated) date, and want a date for some perspective in a person’s life, I use “say.” The uncertainty is implicit in that term.

There are all the other qualifiers as well: before, after, between, by, and flourished.

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In any event, I think it's bad form to change the wording of a profile with an active profile manager just because you would have worded it differently.

Answer 1

There's an extremely relevant article republished on the The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society (NYG&B) site which includes a concise section on "Using About/Circa and Say" in genealogical writing.

Comments

Superb article.  I would hope it can get attached to one or more of our WikiTree Help pages.

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Excellent reference, Joseph! That paragraph for the use of 'Say' is on point for what Steve Harris described below in his Item #1 and is clearly a viable usage for communicating and collaborating. Therefore (to me) calling its users as "disingenuous" and "vacuous" may not be within the bounds of polite discussion......

Since we have no specifics on the particular profile edit being discussed here, the questions remain; why the editor made the change from 'say' to 'about' and what that change made to the context of the intent of the original author.

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OK to facilitate the discussion I tried to follow WikiTree's copying guidelines here:

The following excerpt is from

Estimating dates and ages in genealogical writing

By Patricia Law Hatcher, FASG on February 26, 2019

Originally published in The New York Researcher, Spring 2010

© 2011 The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society

All rights reserved.

"

Using About/Circa and Say

In scholarly publications we use specific terminology to describe how we have determined a non-exact date.

About or circa (Latin for about) are used to indicate a date calculated from an inexact age, as on a census, deposition, or tombstone: born about 1847 (1850 census), born about 1798 (age at death on gravestone), born about 1740 (deposed about 45 years in 1785).

Say indicates a date estimated from life events (see below): born say 1790 (first land purchase in 1815), married by say 1702 (child baptized in 1703), born by say 1677 (estimating marriage at 25). It is based on statistically common patterns and therefore could be off by a number of years."

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Taking this discussion way too far:

The article cited above supports the OP Jack Day's point that "say" is actually a term of art within the field of scholarly genealogical publications, and his use of it is 100% correct; and the edit made to his profile changed the meaning.

But from the responses here it is obvious that "say" is not a widely understood term among us amateurs, and thus cannot easily (as Chris Whitten says) "be applied by all contributors all around WikiTree."

A compromise may be to substitute "estimated" for "say" to be used in the exact same manner. This exact practice is in fact supported by Legacy and WeRelate.

See also: Help:Estimated_Dates

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For what it's worth, it's not an article, it's a blog post. The only other reference I could find regarding the use of "say" in a scholarly fashion was in the same website's own style guide.

There was one other mention within a book, "Professional Genealogy", but not available online. If anyone owns a copy and cares to look at page 464 for us, would be interested in what it says.

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Joseph, thanks for the good words, although I rarely try to claim being 100% of anything...

But my hope in this discussion is NOT that we would create a new mandatory usage where EVERYONE is expected to say "say" when they make a particular type of estimate, but simply that when they see it, its use is respected for what it is.  

As a global site, we are endeavoring ("endeavouring" to those who use International English!) to respect the use of different languages in our biographical narratives, and we need to recognize that different terms in English, especially those often used by professional genealogists, can be respected as well!

Answer 2

I like this; I think I will switch to "let's say".  

It would also be nicer and more accurate to change the No-Source option to "sources will be added by X, by let's say 2022" ( for example ).

Comments

I am opposed to the phrase "sources will be added by X, by letʻs say 2022". There are hundreds of profiles, maybe thousands with that empty promise about adding by 2010, 2011, 2012, etc.

So, letʻs say the profile is Unsourced, because it is, and hope the manager gets back to it sometime. At least tagging it as Unsourced might get it a look by a Sorcerer.

Answer 3

"Say" is not a "term of art", because it does not have a specific, defined meaning in it's use within the discipline of genealogy. Pretending that "[i]n my use of language" has any meaning to anyone else is disingenuous, the common usage between all of us is what we use to communicate on these profiles, and we are writing them for when we are not around to explain our usage.

"Let's say" or "around, say, <year>" are simply vacuous filler words meaning "about", because you won't be randomly picking the first century C.E. unless you believe that to be approximately true. "About" handles that just fine, and "say" in that context is a wordier way of saying "about".

Romani ite domum.

Comments

Sorry Jonathan, but Jack is 100% correct on this one.  Lenin once said that he could destroy an enemy by messing with their language.  Although not at Lenin's hands, English has fallen prey to antiundisambiguationarianism.

The word "say" is not wordier than "about."  Both are one word with 'about' having 66% more letters and double the number of characters.  To 'say' something differs from 'estimating something' and certainly implies a greater degree of uncertainty.  To change this to a word that implies greater certainly is wrong unless the editor had a source to provide greater certainty.

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"about" does not imply greater or lesser certainty, I'm not sure why you are suggesting the same. The usage of "say" requires other words and spaces in order to employ it, therefore counting the letters is invalid. Anyone using it in a genealogical sense, even as a hypothetical, is not going to blatantly just pick a timeframe that makes no sense, and hence is estimating exactly the same as "about". Since it is not as clear when it is used, and requires an explanation where "about" would not, why even use it?

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Obviously, we will never agree on this, but I do wish you a great day! ;>

Answer 4

While this starts to dive off into linguistics and semantics, but I have to agree with Jack's stance and interpretation on this based on the provided information.

1. The phrase "he was born in, say, 1750" is most likely meant to assume something in order to work out what its consequences would be; to make a hypothesis. The exact date (or even an approximation) is unknown and the date given can be wildly off by 50 or more years.
   
   In our hunt for ancestors, this would be what some would call Genealogical Analysis. We create a hypotheses to try explain situations, and these hypotheses are then tested to see if they can be proven or disproven.
   
   "Let's say he was born in 1750..." This is based on an assumption of facts. Now we can try to find better / more facts and use the deductive process in order to prove or disprove that hypothesis. It is not uncommon for these dates to change.
    
2. The phrase "he was born about 1750." is equivalent to an approximation: used to show that something is almost, but not completely, accurate or exact. 
   
   He was born about 1750... This is based on hard evidence already in hand. If I am off a year or two then I am not exact in the date, but it is of no real consequence.

Edited to add: Hypothesis and the use of "let's say" would be a lot less ambiguous if the details were spelled out in a Research note.

Comments

I think your last note hits the mark, Steve: It should all be explained in a Research Note. Exactly how, in as plain language as possible, was the date estimated?

We want to develop standard recommendations that can be applied by all contributors all around WikiTree.

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I agree 100% with the point of view you put forth in #1 Steve (without more context; this was the premise I was working under). If this premise is correct.....

A. I would appreciate all possibles, probables, rule-outs and discussion by the fellow wikitree'er that laboriously arrived at that grey zone ancestor. Whether it was labeled as or if I could understand by context that the entire profile just might be a research note is a minor point. The ground work laid out for me to follow their logic, re-trace their steps and make my own conclusions is the epitome of collaborative genealogy to me.

B. Altering those discussion points without substantive work of your own to add to the discussion is of NO benefit and may in fact be considered harmful to real collaboration.

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This is a valuable "term of art" in professional/academic genealogy, but I believe the meaning is lost when used in the WikiTree context, where folks are not necessarily familiar with this English locution and are not necessarily versed in the niceties of professional/academic genealogy.

I have seen the locution edited to something entirely different by members who thought the word was part of a writing error.  I have been guilty of representing a date as "about" or "estimated" when the cited source used "say," simply because I did not want the statements to be totally misunderstood.

I don't think we should use the locution "say" for the kinds of very rough date guesses we make because we need a birth or death date to create a profile. Typically when I see the word "say" used as the basis for a date in a genealogical publication, it is not used to describe a rough guess, but rather to assign possible dates within a defined set of constraints. For example, if a man whose birth date and marriage date are known had three sons named Tom, Dick, and Harry, in that birth order, and Harry is recorded as marrying 30 years after his father, three birth dates, two years apart, might be posited for Tom, Dick, and Harry (starting with Tom one year after the father's marriage).

Answer 5

My 2 cents, here. I'm French-Canadian, and not well educated. I had to read all the comments and answers to understand the difference between the 2 statements of "about" and "say" (and go to Google) because in my head, they meant the same. When you guys started using "let's say", that when it actually started to click in my brain.

Like some of you have mentioned, as long as you make it as clear as possible, I do like the differentiation between the 2 expressions and will try to use it in my own research and biographies.

One always has to remember that on here, not all of us are native English speakers and little nuances like this make a big difference.

Comments

And even those of us who are native English speakers can be confused by the   differences between British/North American/Australasian idiom (generalising wildly) 

(edited for typo)

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Some of us native English-speakers don't believe there is a distinction, and having to explain a supposed distinction in a Research Note might suggest it's not such a great a idea.

Answer 6

I agree. On WikiTree, in a situation where if I were writing an article for a journal whose style rules approved "say" is where I use the {{Estimated Date}} template, which I then explain in the bio or in a research note.

Answer 7

I think this is more of a language use issue. Most WT users but by no means all, currently reside in North America, we have to accept that language use differs between countries, cultures and languages.

Let's say is for the most part not in my experience a commonly used North American term. The closest North American equivalent is probably, a wild assed guess.

Let's say is in my experience more likely to be used by people of British descent, it certainly was and is in my family.

If we know that a person has records that show children born/baptised  every 2 years from 1770 to 1780, we can guesstimate that this person was probably at least 18 at the time the first child was born, of course this doesn't always hold true, if it was a man he could have been 40 or older.

If all we have is a census record most of the time especially for older censuses we don't know if the children listed on the census are that person's children.

The earliest possible birth date for the father if he was 50/60 when the first child of the current relationship was born, he could have been born in 1710/20 or even earlier, if he was 15/16 when this first child was born he would have been born about 1755.

This is a difference of 45+ years, much too wide a time span to put 'about'.  

Do we know if this was his first family? No we don't, do we have any marriage records? Do we have a death record with an age at death?  Do we have a mother's name for these children?  No we don't, so rather than giving an 'about' of 1750 for his birth date which could be off by many years. We provide a WAG, or let's say.

We don't have the option on WT of entering 1732+ or - 22.5 years, that is how I look at possible birth or marriage dates based on a child's recorded but not necessarily accurate age on a record.

We could put in the research notes, an explanation such as I have given, with no other records the following estimate of birth and or marriage date was made. If people want to describe that explanation as a WAG or let's say, then why not.

There are unfortunately times when we will never have accurate information or records to back up our estimates. We have to accept that in our drive for accuracy we don't and won't always know and to create a possible but unsourced date for events is not accuracy it is guessing.

How we describe that guess hardly matters as long as the reader knows it a very rough estimate.

Comments

I thought it was a North American usage and yes I'd also define it as a guess .

 I'd perhaps use let's say when scribbling an assumption or hypothesis on a whiteboard for discussion purposes but I wouldn't use it in  writing. I don't think I'd ever reduce it to 'say'. On a profile I agree one should explain the reasons for an estimated date.

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In my experience, as a North American, I'd say it's a very commonly used term here.

Answer 8

I wonder why anyone would take the liberty of making such a clearly stylistic change to the work of another WTer.  If someone made a change like that on a profile I manage, I would change it back.

There are always going to be language issues on a website used by people from many parts of the world.  But surely anyone who is on-line using WikiTree can also Google a word if they need to.  I do that many times a day to make sure I'm expressing myself clearly and understanding others.

Google says, as the second definition for "say":  

assume something in order to work out what its consequences would be; make a hypothesis.

"let's say we pay five thousand dollars in the first year."

Comments

Excellent point Julie, it is somewhat of a jumping off point. If we are discussing money and various ways of a financial transaction could be structured it is important to look at all the possibilities.

It is exactly the same with genealogy, we need to explore the possibilities, if as in Jack's original question a date of 1750 is given with no sources, looking at records or possibilities for X number of years plus or minus might provide useful information.

Another common stumbling block is the assumption that families were born, married, lived and died in the same place because that is the location entered.

And I am getting way off topic here!

Answer 9

One problem with trying to distinguish between "say" and "about" on WikiTree is that the date fields only have a button for "about/uncertain", which suggests that, in Wikitree Land, "about" means the same thing as "say."

Answer 10

I actually like word  circa  as an estimate rather than about or say

Answer 11

My favorite "sort of" is circa, which I have always interpreted as "either side of".

Answer 12

Once upon a time we had two separate templates which I think exactly addressed Jack's point. To my mind there is a world of difference between:

{{Estimated date|Birth}} - I've got some basis from which to make an approximation.

and;

{{DateGuess|Birth}} - this is the closest guess I can come up with based on what's available around this person.

Perhaps use of these forms should be actively promoted?

Comments

Date Guess was replaced BY the estimated date template, and should not be used.

Estimated date also allows for other events than just birth.

What is being said here, however, is that "say" is a perfectly good genealogical word, and nobody should be editing someone else's managed profiles and changing it to "about", because the two words differ in meaning.

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Exactly my point Melanie. The two terms mean different things, so just maybe, with an open mind, replacing "say" with "about" is the same as replacing "guess" with "estimate".

I don't advocate either.