Everything in Context

Never just google a word or abbreviation you don’t know and assume the first definition applies to the document or record that you are trying to understand. Words, abbreviations, and phrases are used in context. What was the time period? What type of record are you looking at? Why was the record created? There’s always the possibility that a records clerk created their own abbreviations as well and sometimes google searches just do not work on those words at all.

There are many words and abbreviations that one can encounter–we’re not going to even try and list them all in this post. We’ll mention my favorite as a reminder:

infant

When used in common conversation, it means someone small enough to wear diapers. When used in a legal sense it usually means someone under the age of majority. There’s a huge difference. So when you encounter a word you don’t know, remember that your search for that word is in its infancy 😉