How do you show death and/or divorce on a family tree?

Question

I'm doing a project in English involving family trees.

Answer 1

The easiest way to do a family tree is to turn a pedigree chart 90 degrees, so you are at the bottom, the "tree" branches into two, your parents are above you, their parents are above them on four branches, and so on for three or four generations. Add some pretty leaves and put a bluebird in the branch next to your maternal grandmother.

Next to or below every person you have their birth, marriage and death dates and places. Leave those blank if the person hasn't married or died yet. Put in the marriage that resulted in the child below the couple, not the one that didn't last or the fling with the chorus girl.

Most of us use a program that displays data about a person as either a pedigree chart or a family group sheet. As you click on different people, it changes who you are looking at. We rarely actually draw a "tree".

Answer 2

If you use a commercial programme such as family tree maker there are options to show these things. However if you are doing one by hand the usual way is to show dates of birth and death under each person. If someone dies before marrying or having children but you have no details then two forward slashes // go under their name to show the line stops there.

The marriage in the same way is normally shown with dates and spouses are numbered. Marriages are indicated by = or m

Answer 3

I'm assuming if it's for your English class, you don't have any of the family tree software packages, and are therefore writing it out by hand, or typing it on Word or Excel or something.

If you're drawing out a family tree, the marriage symbol is normally something like an equals sign (=). To show a death you can simply write the year of death as you would another person. This normally comes under their name, and under their birth and marriage dates.

for a divorce, there's no real symbol for family trees, but I suppose you could just either add a second spouse if that's what's needed, or just write "div" under their marriage details. It's not really necessary information though, so don't worry too much about it  

A family tree shows children borne of relationships, but it doesn't really focus much on those relationships after the children were born, UNLESS there are more children born with a new partner, in which case, just add the new partner to the side of the husband or the first wife (but on the same level, so as not to confuse the generations!)