But until I put the numbers in and tried to write about themโฆ I did not know what I was trying to count, or what it would be possible to count. The spreadsheet is not a neutral tool of objective social quantification: it is the story of my research process.
When I started working on witchcraft cases in France from 1790-1940, I knew I wanted to count them. This, of course, was my first mistake. The oldest version I have of the Excel spreadsheet I builtโฆ
โAvoid using the softwareโs โdateโ format.โ (59) Instead use three columns for day month year. (
As any pre-20th century social historian will tell you, the Excel date function does not work for dates before 1900!