Curse the marks on census images

[David Tuson]

For months (may even be years) I had been trying to find where my great grandfather's second wife was living in 1881 befre her marriage in 1889. All name variants and wildcards produced nothing.
She was born in Montgomery in 1855 but whatever I tried I couldn't find her.
But today I was studying her marriage certificate and I decided that I would try to find her sister Elizabeth who I had assumed was a witness.
Blow me down there they both were.
Sarah's age on the image has been virtually obliterated by a heavy black line - it was transcribed as 36 but on closer inspection - screen enlargement, magnifying glass, etc I worked out it was actually 26 - ties in perfectly with her birth.

David

[stepives]

A little trick I use, is less information when searching. Try with no age, or no surname, and even no christian name.
Mind you, that's if you know their details in the first place.

Steve.

[Pam Downes]

I understand that the marks were made with coloured pen but because the images were scanned in black and white the marks just show as black which is what makes some of the details so difficult to read.
Thank goodness the 1911 census and the 1939 Register were scanned in colour.

Pam

[Lesley Robertson]

I have to confess that when I'm entering data onto a table from hardcopy, I also tick the entries off as they are entered.

I have found that where a transcription looks unlikely (eg a higher/lower age) on Anc or FMP, I check it on the other one. Presumably they have different teams of transcribers, because they usually have different typos...