In other cases, there may be errors on the marker. Occasionally, a stonemason made an error in carving information. You might expect these to be caught and a new stone created, but this did not always happen. For example, in one old cemetery in downtown Tampa, Florida, there is a tombstone on which there is a spelling error in the surname. Rather than create a new stone, the stonemason carved a slash through the incorrect letter on the stone and then carved the correct letter above the incorrect one.
Vital dates can also be wrong.
A death certificate may be a primary source for death information, but it is certainly only a secondary source where birth details are concerned. The accuracy of this information again depends on the knowledge of the informant, and any incorrect information provided may be perpetuated on a tombstone. Another cause for an incorrect date on a tombstone may be the vanity of the deceased person. Some people may try to conceal or even lie about their age. Another problem with tombstones is that sometimes they are placed in one location when the burial actually took place somewhere else.