What can main headings be composed of? Main headings, which kick off an entry or array, usually describe a single person or thing. It could be a name, or a government agency, or a physical object, or a concept. It is concrete and identifiable. Which is what we want in… Read More »Index Profile: Tracing Complicated Relationships in Main Headings, in The Other Great Game
I’ve been thinking about a piece of common sense advice that I was reminded of a few months ago. You may have heard it too. It goes like this: on your first pass through the book, pick up more than is necessary, because it is quicker to go back and… Read More »Is Over-Indexing Really a Time-Saving Strategy
Ever struggle to find the right term to use in the index? I do. From an indexing standpoint, ideally the vocabulary used in the book is clear and consistent, making it easy to extract terms and phrases to use as main headings and subheadings. Bu not all books are so… Read More »Index Profile: Untangling Terms in Rediscovering the Goodness of Creation
Will AI replace indexers? I think a lot of indexers have that question lingering in the back of their minds, similar to professionals in many industries. The standard answer against artificial intelligence is that indexing is complex and nuanced enough that only a human, with good reasoning and judgment, can… Read More »Hello AI, Goodbye Indexers?
I think every indexer will, at some point, experience a baptism by fire from updating a previously written index. It is tedious. It is time-consuming. It is mental gymnastics trying to get into the mind of the original indexer and trying to figure out what has changed. My first freelance… Read More »Updating an Index: Worth It or Not Worth It?
I want to shift focus this week to a thought experiment. Fiction is rarely indexed—I have never been asked so far. Yet as an avid reader of fiction, I have often thought about the potential advantages and what the challenges might be. I have blogged before about indexes for fictional… Read More »Indexing Fiction: Thoughts and Suggestions
Specificity is one of the elements we need to strive for in an index. We are, after all, as indexers, in the business of directing people to information, and to do so accurately and efficiently entries needs to be specific enough for the reader to quickly grasp. But this can… Read More »Writing Index Entries with Appropriate Specificity
A few months ago I wrote about using triage to shorten an index to fit a tight space limitation. Today, I want to approach the same problem from the other side, which is to proactively index in such a way that triage and cutting are not needed. Because while cutting the index… Read More »Indexing within a Space Constraint
I was recently prompted to think about what advice I would give myself as a new indexer. My indexing origin story is that I was largely self-taught. How I index has definitely changed over the years, both through trial and error and through learning from other indexers at conferences, the… Read More »Advice to Myself as a New Indexer
I recently received the longest list of terms from an author that I have ever received. The list was so long that I immediately contacted the publisher and explained that even with the extra space I had already asked for and received for the index, there was no way that… Read More »Dealing with Authors and Their Lists of Terms