I would like to encourage readers to make use of the 'Report an Error' facility when an incorrect transcription is found in the Index to the Devon Parish Register images. I can assure you that a correction will be made by the Findmypast staff, usually with in a few days where appropriate. When an entry in a Register is very badly transcribed it would obviously only be found by chance or by having to examine a whole list of at first unlikely-looking names such that it may appear as if the entry has not in fact been Indexed at all. I can demonstrate by a couple of recent examples that have now been corrected on the website. In one case the surname 'Frost' was mis-transcribed as 'Croft'. In a more puzzling case, twin children were transcribed as Susanah and John 'Daund' with the father's First Name 'Shapter'. This looked odd and on inspection of the Image it was clear that the father was 'David Shapley' so the David was mis-transcribed as the surname 'Daund'. I would not disagree that this adds an interesting extra investigative element to our study !
Good advice. I have reported many errors which have usually been promptly amended. However, in 2011 I spent a whole year, exchanged 12 emails and 2 telephone calls with findmypast trying to get the death district of my husband's parents corrected, with no success, and they remain wrong to this day.
They died in the district of Richmond, Yorkshire, and were recorded at the Registry Office there - I was present. However this entry appears on findmypast as taking place at Richmond upon Thames, Surrey. I even explained that the first part of the code number differentiates between the districts but they then asked me for proof of this!! I think at this point I gave up.
The deaths were 3 years apart so there must be hundreds of incorrect entries and I wonder how many people have been misled into looking in completely the wrong county.
It is always good to double check the original registers, transcriptions are a good short cut to the right parish. I have found errors too, but did not realise there was a correction facility. National archives has one too, I sent off details but the original entry is still there.
Double checking can involve browsing an image identified from a reference found in the other Indexes, e.g. Boyd's Marriage Index and successors to the IGI that appear as England Marriages 1538-1973 and England Births & Baptisms 1538-1975 (England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538-1975 on Ancestry) or on FamilySearch.