Inquiring minds want to know

QUESTION: Tell me more about this notion that indexes are information maps.

COLLEEN: Indexers read a text with an eye to distilling its essence or its aboutness. “What is this page about? What is this chapter about?” they ask. As indexers identify elements of aboutness, they state them in pithy little clues known as index entries. Good indexers try to imagine a variety of ways of phrasing clues. Writing entries for all those ways is called multiple posting.

Multiple posting is how indexers offer direction to readers who think in different ways or with different vocabulary. Multiple posting enables the information map—the index—to provide direction to a wide audience. It provides many clues that point the way to a specific information destination.

QUESTION: How do indexers do their work?

COLLEEN: After all the text has been read and all the index entries have been written, indexers arrange their clues—their index entries—in an orderly way, usually alphabetically, in a document that becomes the index.  Typically, indexers do their work in these stages:

1. reading and distilling the text.
2. writing, sorting, and multiple-posting the index entries.
3. creating and structuring the index document.

Specialized indexing software facilitates and quality-checks all the stages of indexing work. Cindex, Macrex, and Sky are three popular indexing software packages.

QUESTION: What advice would you give to someone trying to create an index?

COLLEEN: It will be more difficult and will take longer than you think. Read Nancy Mulvany’s Indexing Books. If you’re the author, don’t index your own work. An author’s job is to construct; an indexer’s job is to deconstruct. Your book will benefit from the second brain of a separate person doing the deconstruction. A good index needs the perspective of someone on the outside, looking in. Find an objective third party—a neighbor or brother or, better yet, an indexing student.

QUESTION: What makes a good indexer?

COLLEEN: A good indexer reads quickly, carefully, and analytically on behalf of future readers, anticipating what they might need to know, and how they might seek it out.

QUESTION: What makes a good index?

COLLEEN: A good index …

1. speaks the readers’ language.
2. provides clues not only to what is explicit, but also to what is implied or suggested.
3. identifies common threads and groups them together.
4. distinguishes substantive information from passing mention.
5. offers direction to readers who think in different ways or with different vocabulary.
6. provides a way to compare books on similar subjects.
7. shows an author’s pride in her work.
8. demonstrates an author’s regard for his readers.