Indexing, or How to Torture a Reader

 

Photo: © Elysia in Wonderland

Professional book indexers are among the smartest people I know. You might picture indexers as nice, middle-aged women who like to talk about embroidery—and you would be partly right—until you see them in a conference session debating syndetic structure. Or until you ask one for advice on subheadings and she sends you thirty-five pages of it.

For expert indexers, building an elegant book index is an intellectual and creative challenge, and an editor appreciates the results as she might a good mystery novel or a perfect dinner party.

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?

Here are a few tips for amateur indexers:

—Look at the styling of page number ranges in the document, and use the same system in writing the index. For instance, 635–36 and 100–101  (Chicago style) may be expressed as 635–636 and 100–101 or 635–6 and 100–1 in other stylebooks.

—Compose cross references logically rather than mechanically, with the reader’s convenience in mind. If it takes the same amount of space or less to supply the page numbers instead of writing a cross reference (as in the example above), give the page numbers at both locations. This is called double posting. (If there are several page numbers, however, a cross reference is usually more economical than a double post.)

—Don’t send a reader to a string of undifferentiated page numbers unless all of those pages pertain to the original entry. If some don’t, create subheadings to identify the ones that do.

—Use cross references only if there is additional information at the destination entry. Don’t send me on a wild goose chase.

In sum, put yourself in the place of the reader, and whenever it’s practical, provide the information that’s most helpful. And if you want to index with the big guys, educate yourself.

 

Comments

[Frank Curry]

Good post, Carol, on a subject dear to the heart of indexers. Indexing is an art, not just following a set of rules or guidelines, and it can take a while to become a skilled artist/indexer. (Much like the art of copyediting.)

[Valerie (Kyriosity)]

"You might picture indexers as nice, middle-aged women who like to talk about embroidery—and you would be partly right—until you see them in a conference session debating syndetic structure."

This made me laugh. As a middle-aged woman who likes to talk about embroidery, I know that to be exactly the category of persons out of whose way I'd recommend staying in a passionate discussion of editorial matters.

I've never had the pleasure(?) of creating a book index, but as a reader I give a hearty amen to your counsel here. Many's the time I've wanted to give a poor indexer a poke with an embroidery needle!

[26_Letters]

Very interesting! I'd love to take a stab at an indexing job (for fun, like a crossword puzzle), but am a complete amateur. I have so much respect for professional indexers. What a task!

[John Cowan]

Orson Scott Card's novella "The Originist" (available in the anthology Foundation's Friends and the collection Maps In A Mirror) contains the best description I've ever read of how an indexer's mind works, and what a _really_ good index can do for scholars. Start on p. 245 of Maps, or read the whole story; it's beautiful for many other reasons. Maps is available on Google Books at http://books.google.com/books?id=FLNCovxKl7IC .

[Nabetafish]

Fyi, the "educate yourself" hyperlink at the end is broken.

[Carol Saller]

Thank you, Nabetafish! I updated the links.