There is no right or wrong way to present a chart of your family. You may prefer to start with a common ancestor and show all descendants or begin with the current generation and chart the families in reverse. If you intend for your family history to stand as a reference for future family historians, you'll want to use standard, commonly accepted genealogy formats. Some provide greater space-savings than others.
While genealogy publishing software may automatically format charts and other family data in a suitable fashion, when formatting data from scratch consider these tips:
- Consistency - When listing birth, marriage, death, and other pertinent dates, be consistent in your format throughout the book. Consistency is important throughout your book.
- Indents - Use indentation with bullets and/or numbering to list successive generations of descendents. The indents help to maintain readability when compressing chart information to save space.
- Keep Info Together - When continuing information to another page, end on one individual and start the next page with a new individual if at all possible.
- Small Caps - As with narratives, use small caps (rather than standard all caps) for surnames.
- Boxes or Lines - If making boxes or drawing lines on charts that connect family lines, be consistent in the line style used.
