Mr. McGregor

Some authors are excellent indexers of their own work. But sadly, some are not. Reading a homemade index the other day, I randomly checked a few cross references to get a feel for the writer’s competence, and once again found myself in awe. How is it that a person can have degrees from two world-class universities and still write an index entry like this (details have been changed to protect the clueless):

rabbit stew. See McGregor, Mr.

which took me to this:

McGregor, Mr., 15

How much trouble would it have been simply to give the page number at the original location instead of forcing me to make that trip?

 

Thank you, Carol Saller. I couldn’t have said it better myself. (Carol is an editor at the University of Chicago Press.)