Help:Charting ancestors

The earlier types of family tree were generally of two types: ancestors and descendants. Each of those had two main variants. Late 20th-century computer programs have expanded the range a little and allowed for even more variation of layout.

Ancestors above
The ancestry chart that most resembles a tree has a person at the bottom with parents in the next line(s) above and their parents further up again. An example in this wiki is at User:WMWillis/Tree.

Ancestors to the right
The other common form (popularised by various societies' printed blank forms) has the person at the left, with parents tabulated to the right and their parents further to the right, and so on. That layout (with optional variants in style) can be found at RootsWeb's WorldConnect. For example, see the pedigree of the mother of one of this site's administrators:
 * table style
 * text style

How to create them here
Most charts involving text and (visible or invisible) vertical and horizontal lines can be created on this site using HTML tables or the simpler wiki tables. Check with the creator of any such chart found here.