Some common mistakes in genealogy

I tend to look at an awful lot of genealogy and some of it is really
awful. Here is a compilation of a few of the most obvious and easily
rectified errors:

1. Failing to look for and record the correct full name of an ancestor.
One of the side benefits of looking at a large collection of user
submitted family trees is that it is fairly easy to compare the
submissions of any one individual and see the variations. In this case, I
have used Ancestry.com's Public Member Trees and New FamilySearch for
the lists. All of the individuals I examine in this post as well known
and accurate information on the individual is extremely easy to find. I
can verify a name of any of these individuals from several online free
original sources. Here is the classic example from my family: Henry
Martin Tanner. Just to get an idea of the number of submissions,
Ancestry.com's Public Trees show 37,110 returns on a search for his
name. The name variations are as follows:
Henry Martin Tanner
Henry Tanner
Henry M. Tanner
Henry W. Tanner (obviously wrong)

I started with someone who is well recorded. Here is the second example: Henry's father, Sidney Tanner.
Sidney Tanner
Sidney
Sydey Tanner
Sydney Tanner

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