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Note - This is one of a series of pages on how to search the On-Line London Gazette. It is highly recommended that you start at the index to the series and work through the lessons in the correct order.
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Recognition errors |
Now the first problem can be demonstrated. Go up the right-hand column and using the I beam cursor, draw a rectangle round the entries from Major Grasett down to Captain Henry Ronald Hall.
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Using the CTRL-C and CTRL-V method outlined previously, copy and paste the entries to Windows Notepad or to your favourite word-processor. You should get:
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Capt. and Bt. Maj.
Arthur Edward Grasett, M.a, R.E. T./Oapt. (T./Maj.) Frederick Buss Graystone, M.C., R.A. T./Lt.-C'ol. James McGavin Greig, W. York. R., attd. 18th Bn., York, and Lanes. R. Maj. Howard Charles Grabble, R.F.A., T.F., attd. 523rd Sge. Bty., R.G.A. Capt. Edward Jo>hns Grinling, M.C., I/4th Bn., Line. R., T.F. Maj. Arthur Marjoribanks Guild, High. Cyc. Bin., attd. I/19th Bn., Lond. R. Maj. Atthelstane Claud Gunter, 488th Sge. Bty., R.G.A. Capt. (A./Maj.) Henry Ronal'd Hall, M.C., A/47th Bde., R.F.A. |
Now we can see that the optical recognition process has resulted in several errors. In fact, every single entry has an error!
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Capt. and Bt. Maj.
Arthur Edward Grasett, M.a, R.E. |
M.a, R.E. should be M.C. R.E. |
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T./Oapt. (T./Maj.)
Frederick Buss Graystone, M.C., R.A. |
T./Oapt. should be T./Capt. Buss should be Russ |
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T./Lt.-C'ol. James
McGavin Greig, W. York. R., attd. 18th Bn., York, and Lanes. R. |
T./Lt.-C'ol. should be T./Lt.-Col. York, and Lanes. R. should be York. and Lancs. R. |
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Maj. Howard Charles
Grabble, R.F.A., T.F., attd. 523rd Sge. Bty., R.G.A. |
Grabble should be Gribble! |
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Capt. Edward Jo>hns
Grinling, M.C., I/4th Bn., Line. R., T.F. |
Jo>hns should be Johns I/4th should be 1/4th Line. R. should be Linc. R. |
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Maj. Arthur Marjoribanks
Guild, High. Cyc. Bin., attd. I/19th Bn., Lond. R. |
Bin., should be Bn. I/19th Bn., should be 1/19th Bn |
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Maj. Atthelstane
Claud Gunter, 488th Sge. Bty., R.G.A. |
Atthelstane should be Athelstane |
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Capt. (A./Maj.)
Henry Ronal'd Hall, M.C., A/47th Bde., R.F.A. |
Ronal'd should be Ronald |
Having seen all the errors in the "translated" page, it is not surprising that there will be problems with searches. When you ask the London Gazette's search engine to look for "Athelstane Claud Gunter", it won't find the entry shown above, because his name is stored in the database as "Atthelstane Claud Gunter". Similarly, you'll never find John Grinling's entry, because the database has stored his name as "Jo>hns Grinling".
Let's test this by going to the initial search page and entering john grinling into the search engine. It finds only one entry - Gazette Edition, Issue 29608, dated 2-June-1916. It did not find the page we have been looking at, which was for 1919.
Now go back and search for jo>hns grinling as follows:
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This time it will give you another entry - the page for 1919 which we have just been looking at. We have now found him.
Similarly, you need to search for Grabble
if you want to find Major Gribble!
As can be seen in the above examples, recognition errors are very common, and make searching very difficult. OCR technology gets better every year, but marks on the printed page and poor-quality printing on thin paper will always cause problems for the automatic recognition of text.
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