There is an accepted piece of trail lore that revolves around Auto-Save / Quick-Save - that they are bad, and create curruption within the game and save files.

Is this in fact true? I mean, as a proven fact? I've never actually read of an explanation as to what the difference is and why, but it would certainly be nice to just whack that F-key to save.

Just seeking a conclusive answer to a long standing assumption. Thank you to any who respond.

Personally, I have no idea, but the creator of ENB, Boris Vorontsov, who knows a lot about the engine's inner workings, says that it's only when the menu is open that all running processes stop, so it's only then it's completely safe to make saves. I'd guess that goes for when the console is open as well. In short, according to him it's only hard saves made when the menu is open that are completely safe.

The real issue with auto saves is that most of them happen when there is a lot of activity in loading new content, example entering a city or leaving a city. During that activity the of loading the new content and saving the character information the game seems of having a higher chance of crashing and in return it might also make the Auto Save file bad. Good thing in Skyrim there are a few Auto Saves but still. I also believe that using the same save might not be writing a fresh overwrite but it is just adding more data to it and possibly some of the old data gets damaged or is missing some information and that can cause a save to get corrupted.

I have found it best with any Bethesda game is to save often and create a new game save on a regular basis and move the old saves to a backup folder just in case.

It's been that way since Oblivion. When mods are added not all variables will get properly saved (because they are still running and active), and can cause corruption upon the next load. With a hard save running variables are temporarily suspended while the menu is open and will get saved correctly. You would have to dig way back to find where this was discovered, but to play it safe if you are running mods of any type, then hard save only or use an autosave manager.