New programming has been put into effect that will assist your office in data entry and searching for existing people/companies on the administrative system.
In order to keep our administrative database of names as standard and clean as possible, please use the following guidelines when entering names:

1. All names should be entered in capital letters.



2. Avoid punctuation, if at all possible.
• Company names should use punctuation, including periods (.) and commas (,), only to assist in readability. Use "ANTHONY PROGRAMMING INC" rather than "ANTHONY PROGRAMMING, INC.".
• Punctuation in personal names should be limited to accent marks (‘ or `), tilde (~), and hyphens (-) where needed. Use "ANTHONY SR" or "ANTHONY III" rather than "ANTHONY SR." or "ANTHONY, I.I.I.".
• Leave punctuation out of initials, whether they are in the first name or middle name fields. Use "S" rather than ‘S.’.


3. The first and middle name fields should NEVER be used for companies. Do not use ANTHONY (last field) SUSAN B (first field) INC (middle field). Instead, use SUSAN B ANTHONY INC [preferred] (last field) or ANTHONY SUSAN B INC [acceptable] (last field). If the last name field on your data entry screen does not contain enough spaces for the majority of your company names, please contact Kathy Sanley (extension 4165) in OIS.



4. Unless you know that someone’s first name is just initials (example JB ANTHONY), do not put all of the initials in the first name field. If the person’s first initial is J and their second is B, then J should be entered in the first name field and B should be entered in the middle name field. See 2 above in the cross- referencing section for how the system will handle this situation.



5. For a name like S BARBARA ANTHONY, you should enter ANTHONY (last) S (first) BARBARA (middle) not ANTHONY (last) S BARBARA (first). See 2 above in the cross-referencing section for how the system will handle this situation.



6. For international students who have selected an "Americanized" name, that name should go in the Preferred name field, not the first or middle. Use LU (last) CHING CHOW (first) SUSAN (preferred) rather than LU (last) CHING CHOW (first) SUSAN (middle) or LU (last) SUSAN (first) CHING CHOW (middle).



7. Unless a person has officially taken their maiden and/or former name as part of their middle name and/or last name, it should not be used in the middle or last fields. For example, Susan B Jones just married John Anthony. She is officially using Jones as part of her middle name. Her name should be entered like ANTHONY (last) B JONES (middle – if she has kept the B) SUSAN (first) JONES (maiden) rather than ANTHONY (last) JONES (middle) SUSAN B (first). Her sister, Margaret, married John’s brother Jim. She is taken his last name and dropping her maiden name. Use ANTHONY (last) B (middle) MARGARET (first) JONES (maiden).



8. If you do not have the maiden, former and/or preferred names fields on your screen, please contact Kathy Sanley (extension 4165) in OIS.

As always, when searching for a person and/or company, please check carefully before setting up a new id. We seem to be creating more and more duplicate ids. Duplicate ids clutter up the system and cross-referencing and makes it difficult to share data across files.