All of us sometimes need to be reminded of things.
For me–it’s spelling a last name consistently when writing about one specific person or couple. In writing a narrative about two members of my Behrens family, I alternated between Behrends and Behrens. I need to choose one spelling. My normal approach is to use the spelling that most members of the family used–when that is known.
Virtually all members of my Rampley family use that spelling today, so that’s the one that I use. It certainly gets spelled a variety of ways in documents, but I use “Rampley” when writing about them and entering names into databases. The last name Trautvetter gets written a variety of ways, but generally speaking that is the spelling most members of my family use today and it’s also usually the spelling they used when they signed the occasional pre-1900 document. Except for a branch of my family that went to Kansas. They used Troutfetter and that is the spelling I use for members of that branch of the family because I know that’s what they use. Everyone else (when I’m writing about them) gets Trautvetter.
Documents and records should be transcribed as they are written. But when writing expository paragraphs about an individual, I should use a consistent spelling.
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