1911 con

[Mum44]

Inicky, if your ancestors filled in a form, then it's there - you just haven't found it yet.  Having just spent about an hour informing Ancestry of several transcription errors in the 1871/1881/1891/1901 censuses, I can assure you that the problem is not confined to the 1911 census, but the 1911 census is probably an aggrevated problem, because it's not the enumerator's reports that are transcribed, but the (often bad) handwriting of the householders themselves.

And not just their handwriting      If they have spelled anything incorrectly - surname, their name, children's names, occupations  -  what ever  -  it is transcribed as written and will not be changed      At least Ancestry puts up alternatives for errors 

[Nick29]

Inicky, if your ancestors filled in a form, then it's there - you just haven't found it yet.  Having just spent about an hour informing Ancestry of several transcription errors in the 1871/1881/1891/1901 censuses, I can assure you that the problem is not confined to the 1911 census, but the 1911 census is probably an aggrevated problem, because it's not the enumerator's reports that are transcribed, but the (often bad) handwriting of the householders themselves.

And not just their handwriting      If they have spelled anything incorrectly - surname, their name, children's names, occupations  -  what ever  -  it is transcribed as written and will not be changed      At least Ancestry puts up alternatives for errors 

You can't call them errors, only alternative transcriptions.  My grandmother always thought her name was "Happy Phillis".  She put that name on every official form she filled in - her marriage certificate, census forms, birth certificates of her children, etc.  The problem was that it simply wasn't her name !  Although her mother had no doubt thought my grandmother was a happy baby, and may have included the name when she was baptised, the name on her birth certificate was just plain "Phillis".   Should we correct this grave error that my grandmother often made ?

By all means offer alternatives, as Ancestry will no doubt do, when they eventually host the 1911 census, but you should not correct transcriptions, because a transcription should be a representation in text of what's on the form.

[Just Kia]

I 3/4 agree with you Nick, but sometimes the transcriptions are plain wrong and the original image looks nothing like what the transcribers has put.
There can be many reason for it - tired (maybe having done a lot of transcriptions that day), new to transcribing, or a change in the handwriting of the item to be transcribed or even plain old human error.

I've recently found one where the family I was looking for were transcribed under the name of the family above them (not 1911 obviously).
One problem I see with transcribing the 1911 is that every single schedule to be transcribed is (probably) in different handwriting and so there is little chance to "get the eye in" so to speak. When transcribing a bunch of stuff from one person's writing you can get a feel for their letter forms, one can't do that with the 1911.

It does make me wonder though how much the ennumerators "corrected" in the previous censuses?

[Nick29]

I see your point, but as we often know too well from our experiences here, put some poor handwriting in front of 100 people, and you'll get at least half a dozen different interpretations, all convinced that they are right.  One thing that transcribers tend to do is to change unusual names into ones which they have heard.  One would think that having an uncommon surname would make it easier to find, but not a bit of it, because transcribers change it.  Yesterday I was venturing up a branch of my tree trying to trace a family with the surname HARBON - should have been a piece of cake, if the transcribers hadn't changed it to HARTON, HARMON, HARBORN and HARLOW !   

[Springbok]

On the 1901 Government site, my Grandfather and family still does not come up, even if I put in the most basic information!

Back then, I was not on Ancestry, and so spent a great deal of time trawling through the streets until I reached the road where they lived. (How fortunate that I knew of the House!)

When I eventually found the entry, the writing is copper-plate clear.

After all these years, the entry still does not appear!!

On Ancestry the 1901 entry always appears first on the page!!

I find that the 1911 has a similar (to me) inefficient search engine.

Spring

[pete ash]

I spent ages looking for grandad in 1911c and couldn't find him.
Luckily he was still at home with his parents, so found him that way. However even by searching with the information on the 1911c transcript neither he or his brothers or mother turns up, only his father
          pete