---
title: Artefacts, Transcriptions and Comments
description: "An artefact is one piece of evidence: a certificate, a photograph, a screenshot, a page of notes, a spreadsheet row. The Artefacts tab is where it gains whatever detail you want to give it. ## The fields - **Title** and…"
url: "https://www.ancestorpress.com/docs/fr-artefacts-and-transcriptions/"
updated: "2026-09-22"
category: AncestorPress Family Research
---

# Artefacts, Transcriptions and Comments

An artefact is one piece of evidence: a certificate, a photograph, a screenshot, a page of notes, a spreadsheet row. The Artefacts tab is where it gains whatever detail you want to give it.

## The fields

- **Title** and **type** - both optional. An untitled artefact shows as "Untitled" with its capture date.
- **Tags** - free text, comma separated, as you enter them.
- **Transcription** - the source's own words.
- **Comments** - your remarks, doubts and reminders.
- **Linked people** - who the artefact is about, from your tree.
- **Analysis fields** - source and information classification, optional and never required.

## Transcript and comments are never merged

This is a hard rule, and it follows genealogical standard practice. The transcription holds what the document says; your comments hold what you think about it. They are stored separately and never run together, so a later reader can always tell the record from the interpretation.

## Verbatim storage

A transcription is stored exactly as you type it, including spacing, line breaks and conventions such as "<sic>". The plugin will not tidy it, reflow it or strip it; it removes only characters that are never part of a transcription, such as control codes, and rejects text that is not valid UTF-8. What you typed is what is stored, and it is escaped when displayed.

## Provenance

Every transcription carries where it came from, its status and its date. This matters most with the Pro AI transcription: machine output is marked unverified until you confirm or correct it, and AI never replaces text you typed, corrected or confirmed.