How Do You Read for Indexing?

As indexers, we spend a lot of time reading. Good reading skills are essential. As I indexed more books, I found that my reading strategy changed.

I remember plowing into that first book without any thought about how I could read it most efficiently to write the index. I just went right for the nitty-gritty very granular stuff. I tried to organize (build structure) as I read paragraph by paragraph.

The resulting index needed so much editing. That was mostly due to my reading strategy, or lack thereof. Of course, I was a beginning indexer—new, wet behind the ears. I hadn’t yet learned about index structure. Index “structure” is mentioned in references on indexing, but the “how” of establishing it is really not discussed (see Perlman below).

Now I’ve learned how important structure is for a good index as well as a method of establishing it (see Leise), writing an index is much easier. I have a framework for the details. I’m no longer inserting entries higgledy-piggledy into my software; there is a method for organizing my writing.

Reading Strategy

Even though I read for entertainment (just not a TV person), how I read for entertainment is not how I read for work. I don’t read as an indexer when I’m noshing on popcorn and reading a good mystery. Reading for writing an index needs to be different.

Nothing in my indexing courses suggested that I might need to read differently in various phases of the process but I find that I do read differently—and differently depending on the phase of index development. Different phases need different reading strategies.

Establishing Overall Structure

• Skimming: A quick run through the pages to see where the author is going—almost like recreational reading. It’s to find “aboutness” (see Mertes), to get a broad overview, to establish the author’s arguments. I’m looking for in-chapter headings. If it’s one of my more technical books, and I’m really lucky, there will be subheadings, and maybe even sub-subheadings. Those I can quickly turn into entries and subentries. Structure!
• Scanning: A search for more specific information, for example, to determine the extent of a discussion of an idea or find names. I find this interspersed with the skimming or to pick out keywords. If I come to a chapter heading that suggests two topics that might need to be separated, I change from skimming to scanning, but still not reading for detail—only enough to continue building my structure.

Filling in the Details: Textual Indexing

Now that I have that structure established using scanning and skimming, I will read in a way that we often associate with studying. Gathering more detail to generate subentries, and adding more main entries if needed.

Reading material at this level, I’ll tap into my prior knowledge of the subject to follow the author’s ideas using context clues provided by the author in her (or his) discussions. I’ll also be making inferences about the author’s intended meaning, giving more detail to the overall structure. Now I have some ideas about how to organize the details as I work.

References

• Leise, Fred, ” How to Create Brilliantly Structured Indexes: A Metatopic- and Pan-Granular-Based Process”, www.asindexing.org/online-learning/structured-leise/
• On Aboutness—Determining What It’s All About (Dec. 17, 2013), www.asindexing.org/webinars/kate–mertes–aboutness/
• Perlman, Janet, “Index Structure”, pp.58–59. Indexing Tactics & Tidbits.