Statement of Accuracy of Information and Standards of Transcription

Any web page may contain errors, either of factual information, in the reproduction (transcription) of other documents, or in links to other web sites. We will always do our best to keep these to a minimum, but we do not claim to achieve 100% perfection. So when evaluating our pages for accuracy, please be aware that the original source itself may not be perfect. If we're transcribing from a handwritten, or typescript source, pages may be faint, smudged, or damaged, or if the original is ‘carved in stone’, it may have suffered from erosion, or from physical damage. And in some cases the carving itself may be discovered to be incorrect.

In addition, spelling and word usage have changed over the centuries; there is very little point quibbling over a place name spelling which might or might not have a letter ‘e’ on the end. Neither should you expect the Surnames you are searching for to be recorded in a particular way. In old documents, the recording of Surnames has varied enormously. This is not surprising, when the owner of that surname may not have been able to read or write, and recording depended on a third party to record his preferred spelling. Even now, in the digital age, misunderstanding occur, both in conversation, and in written sources; and as we all know, the opportunity to correct them may have long passed, or else correcting them - in the phone book, for example - may involve more effort than it's worth.

When transcribing such material, we type what we see. The onus is then on the researcher to decide on its suitability for his or her purposes, and if necessary check the original source in case of doubt. We will be more than happy to correct any mistakes we ourselves make, so if you have seen the original source yourself, and can demonstrate to us that our transcription is incorrect, we will change it. But we will NOT change it unless you have done that, and we will NOT change an accurate representation of the original recording, even if that has been shown to record the wrong facts.

These are the standards all good transcribers adhere to. For a more detailed discussion see GENUKI's Statement of Copyright and Accuracy, which I (Rosemary) had a hand in writing.

This is a Genealogy Website
URL of this page: https://texts.wishful-thinking.org.uk/Accuracy.html
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