st: data management issue (names listed differently)

[Rufus Peabody <rufus.peabody@gmail.com>]

Hey all,

I'm working with a dataset that contains a few variable containing the  
name of different college football teams.  The problem is, they are  
not spelled consistently (i.e. Miami(FL) and Miami Florida; USC and  
Southern Cal).  In many cases the spelling differs only in that there  
is an extra space after the school name for some.  What I'd like to do  
(and I'm pretty sure is possible) is create a master file with all the  
school names and possible spellings, which I can then somehow merge  
with my original dataset (and any future datasets with these teams) to  
create a consistent spelling.  How do I go about doing this?  
Specifically, if I have, say three variables containing spelling 1,  
spelling 2, and spelling 3 of a school, and I want to use spelling 1  
in another dataset, how can I merge with a variable that has some  
schools with spellling 1 and others with spelling 2 or 3?

Thanks a lot,
Rufus
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