One of the fun things about indexing — yes, it’s a fun job! — is learning about subjects I wouldn’t otherwise. In my spare time, I’d rather read a young adult novel than a book about party politics or programming apps. But on the job, I do read about just about every subject imaginable (indexers […]
Indexing Names: Passing Mentions
All professions, whether they admit to it or not, develop specialized vocabularies—jargon, terms of art, whatever you want to call them—and indexers, to whom vocabularies are the bread and butter, are no exception. Last time on the blog, Joanne wrote about a couple of basic errors to look for when evaluating indexes. The first one she discussed […]
Numbers in Indexes
The most memorable characteristic of an index is the arrangement of the entries in alphabetical order*. It makes it easy to find what you’re looking for, and even the picky differences between word-by-word and letter-by-letter arrangement aren’t noticeable to a casual user. But what about numbers? Since they’re not letters and therefore not obviously subject […]
Tech Tips: Creating Custom PDF Stamps in iAnnotate
I’ve mentioned using PDF stamps for proofreading and index editing before. While you can import proofreading stamp sets — here’s an old post about that — I like to make my own, especially for editing my indexes. Indexers who mark up page proofs prior to entering terms in their indexing software may also find it useful […]
Happy Indexing Day!
For our friends in the UK, it’s the inaugural National Indexing Day. A celebration of the Society of Indexers‘ 60th anniversary, National Indexing Day is a great way to promote indexing and raise awareness of the value of indexes—and indexers. After all, contrary to popular belief, indexes don’t write themselves! SI was formed in 1957, and within a year had 100 […]
PI Associate Interview: Martha Malnor
We’re running a series of interviews to introduce you all to our wonderfully talented group of independent indexers and taxonomists who enable us to say “yes” to the variety of project types and turnaround times our clients are looking for. Today, we’d like you to get to know our talented book indexer, Martha Malnor Your Business PI: […]
