Handwriting being what is was or is (and mine is terrible), and mistakes
in oral transmission of information being common, it is no wonder that
census records and other official documents sometimes contain honest
mistakes or that indexers or transcribers thereof have difficulty
reading them or sometimes make errors in indexing or transcribing them.
 
One of my colleagues reports that a census entry for a person's daughter
named Josephine gave the child's name as Joseph E.; and I once saw a
child named Otho transformed into Other and therefore not indexed.
 
Inexpert work at the keyboard, what we used to call typing, can create
equally serious mistakes.
 
Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
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