Sentences

Sentence Features

Second Site supports TMG sentences, including

variables (e.g., [P], [PO], [D], etc.)
conditional variables (e.g., <[M]>)
one principal or two phrases (e.g., <was|and [PO] were>)
default and custom sentences
roles and witnesses
living and not-living sentence variations (e.g., [P] is ...||[P] was ...)
the "empty memo" variable <[M0]>
split memo fields
split place detail
sensitive data exclusion (via -, --, {}, and [HID:][:HID])
tag exclusion if the sentence is excluded
automatic prefixes for date variables (e.g., "on 18 May 1958", "in May 1958")

and more.

Show Excluded Data

If the Show Excluded Data option is checked, and a sentence begins with the single-exclusion marker ("-"), Second Site will include the tag in the output.

Differences from TMG

Second Site mimics TMG output as much as possible, but there is a lot of software involved and Second Site does not match TMG exactly. The list below describes cases where Second Site knowingly deviates from TMG.

(Note that in the following descriptions, a sentence is defined as the output from interpreting the sentence definition, not as a sentence in grammatical terms.)

Pronoun Substitution

Second Site offers a choice of three rules that control pronoun substitution, including no pronoun substitution, a Second Site rule, and a rule which is designed to mimic TMG. See the Names Section.

Subject Role Rule

Second Site includes a Subject Role Rule to control the value of the [R:RoleName] variable in the sentence for a person assigned the given role. See the Names Section. for more information.

Role Age (RA:) Variables

Second Site handles the <[RA:Role]> variable differently than TMG; TMG will always produce a value if there is a witness with the given role. Second Site will only produce a value if there is someone with the given role and that person's age can be determined.

AE Variables

TMG has several "exact age" variables including AE, SE, and RE:role. In TMG, the values produced by the exact age variables vary from precise ages ("at age 23 years, 7 months and 17 days") to estimates ("at age ~23"). Second Site uses a very conservative approach when creating the output of the exact age variables and so you may find cases where a TMG report will include output from an exact age variable, but Second Site will omit the value. Specifically, when one or both of the dates involved (the subject's birth date, or the date of the event) are estimates using "about", "circa", etc., Second Site will not produce a value for an exact age variable.

Sentence-Ending Periods

Before adding a period at the end of a sentence, Second Site searches backwards from the end of a sentence in order to determine (a) if a period is already present and (b) the best location for a period.

While searching, Second Site skips over formatting codes. For example, if the end of the sentence came from a memo field, and that memo field was

[ITAL:]"Italicized text in quotes"[:ITAL]

the output would be

"Italicized text in quotes."

Note that the ending period was placed inside the quotes; Second Site skipped over the formatting code ([:ITAL]) and the ending quote character.

In-sentence Periods

In Second Site, periods that are present in the sentence structure for a tag have special meaning. When adding text to the output of a sentence, if the last significant character processed was a period from the sentence structure, the first character of the text being added will be capitalized. You can defeat the special processing associated with in-sentence periods using the backslash character. See the following examples.

In the following examples, assume that the word "he" replaces the second [P] in the sentence because of pronoun substitution. Whether or not "he" is capitalized to "He" is determined by the preceding characters in the output, and the source of those characters.

Sentence	Example Output
[P] was lazy, [P] slept all day	John Doe was lazy, he slept all day.
[P] was lazy. [P] slept all day	John Doe was lazy. He slept all day.
[P] was lazy\. [P] slept all day	John Doe was lazy. he slept all day.

Sentence

Example Output

[P] was lazy, [P] slept all day

John Doe was lazy, he slept all day.

[P] was lazy. [P] slept all day

John Doe was lazy. He slept all day.

[P] was lazy\. [P] slept all day

John Doe was lazy. he slept all day.

Periods that come from other data fields, not from the sentence, are treated as data and do not cause any capitalization.

Citation References

Second Site uses the period's position as a starting point for deciding where to put citation references. This approach attempts to avoid the problem of citation references that are visually separated from the data to which they apply because of trailing formatting codes such as [:CR:].

References to embedded citations are placed at the point of the [CIT:] code.

Person Links

Names of other principals and witnesses are converted to links to the other person under the control of the Name.Name Link property.