> Presumably where the style of name is different, merging is inappropriate?

No, go ahead and merge them.

Sometimes, the style of the name is different, because the various
works/editions were published that way.  In which case, it might be
nice to know that.

However, other times the name is different because a librarian
somewhere cataloged it that way, despite what may have been printed on
the book.

I don't know this author, but it is possible for example that his
books were published as "William S. Mann", but a librarian put him in
the catalog as "William Somerville Mann" just to make the entry more
complete or less ambiguous.  And a miscellaneous Amazon seller, being
sloppy, listed him as "William Mann".   (Not that I would make
gratuitous generalizations about these things, you know...  Ok, I
would   :-)

It is as much about the variations in import data sources for OL, as
it is about variations in actual publication.

If you know how the name was originally printed on a particular
edition and want to record that in OL, you can do that.  Edit the
edition, turn on "librarian mode", and put it into the "by" statement
field.  But personally, I would not assume that the author entry being
merged is necessarily what was on the printed page.

- Alan
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