When viewing an original document (or a microfilm or digital copy), do you try and determine if the same person wrote out the entire record? Or does it look like perhaps more than one person wrote on the document? If that's the case there may have been multiple informants on the record or someone may have written in additional information years later.
All of which impacts how reliable we perceive the information to be.
Unfortunately, it may be difficult to detect differences in handwriting, ink, etc. with microfilmed documents.
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