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I'm using a local county website to retrieve digital images of many documents (marriage, wills, etc.) pertaining to my family history. I'm not having an issue citing the actual images or where I found them. My question is this...on more than one occasion, the name is misspelled (sometimes mangled) in the index but then once I pull up the image of the original document, the name is spelled correctly. Basically, the index has transcription errors. What does this do to the citation? I'm not citing the index. I'm citing the original document with the correct spelling. My concern is that someone else might have difficulty finding the document on the online portal using the index. Am I overthinking this? I'm providing all the pertinent details in my citation that point to the online location AND also to the original repository, so is the misspelling in the index not an issue I need to concern myself with? Unless of course I AM actually citing the index....which is NOT what I am citing now though.
Thanks!
Vangorden, running a search
Vangorden, running a search of this site for the word "spell," I find several links to prior discussions or QuickTips that discuss spelling problems. For example, the QuickTips posting "Citing Key Parties in a Record" (https://www.evidenceexplained.com/quicktips/citing-key-parties-record) tell us this:
In all cases, you would spell the name(s) exactly as spelled in the record. If you feel it necessary to include a "correct" spelling, then place the exact spelling from the document in quotation marks and add your correction in square editorial brackets.
EE itself, of course, has discussions also. Under "Correcting Labels," 11.10 states:
Personnel who create file labels, indexes, and databases may have trouble reading names in historic documents. When a modern label carries a reading you feel is erroneous, you still need to cite the label exactly so the record can be retrieved. You may also want to “correct” the reading in your notes or your citation. To do so, place the correction in square editorial brackets, as demonstrated above with the surname “Shawn [Shown].”
EE 13.35 offers another example. There, the discussion provides this explanation:
CORRECTING MISSPELLINGS IN “PRINTED PRIMARY SOURCES”
Published government documents belong to that class of records academic researchers have traditionally called printed primary sources, meaning they are “original” historic records that are now available in printed form. However, they hold significant potential for error in the identification of individuals, given the difficulty that printers in the federal capital would have had in working with penned documents from writers in the hinterlands who were often of a different culture.
When you encounter individuals who are incorrectly identified in published government documents, you may correct the identification in the manner used in note 1 above—that is, place the correct name in square editorial brackets after the printed name