Since we are PI (Potomac Indexing), we’ve always held the mathematical constant, π, close to our hearts and use it in our logo. So, today being π day, we are duly celebrating the usefulness of this great and ultimately impossible-to-pin-down number (more on π’s wonderfully irrational and transcendental qualities at Wikipedia, here). Pi and Indexing As indexers and taxonomists, […]
Book Indexing for Authors: Part 2
Welcome to Part 2 of our little overview of the book indexing process. If you missed part 1, check it out here. Especially if you are an author tasked to create an index for your nonfiction book, this little set of posts may be useful to smooth out the process. Of course, we’d love to […]
Tips for Indexing New Editions
We often index second — or third, or thirteenth — editions for clients, which means we often address a tricky part of indexing: the update. Sounds simple; you just change the page numbers, right? Not really. The text is a revised edition, not a reprint, which means the content has changed. It’s been moved around, […]
Book Indexing for Authors: Part 1
I know. You (writer about to publish a non-fiction book of more than 100 pages) are so tired of looking at your text over and over, assessing editing changes, tweaking content; the very last thing you may want to do is take on the indexing. First choice should be to hire a professional indexer (we […]
Name Dropping in the Index
I’ve had some interesting additions to indexes during author reviews, mostly about adding in additional mentions of names. One point of occasional tension between book indexers and authors will be how to handle names in the index. Authors have a tendency to lean in the direction of every-mention-of-every-name, or at least “every-mention-of-names-that-are-important-to-me.” 🙂 Meanwhile, the […]
Estimating Index Size
One of the best ways to cut down on editing time is to make sure your index is the right size in the first place. Not all clients will give you a length requirement to fill, but when they do, it’s easier to have an index that’s the right size than to have to edit […]
