After an interesting conversation with a PI partner on Skype, I looked back and saw a blog post on setting boundaries that needed expression. I remember from when I started my freelance book indexing business the feeling of not wanting to turn down any jobs, because, who knows if another one would show up to […]
Indexing Expertise: The Importance of Practice
Love reading nonfiction? Know quite a bit about a lot of subjects? Expert author in your field? It seems like these would be great preliminary qualifications for building indexes. And understanding of the subject matter is a very important prerequisite for indexing a book, although PhD-level expertise may not always be necessary. For example, I […]
Expert, Generalist, or Somewhere in Between?
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 […]
Embedded and Hyperlinked Indexes
The embedded index The embedded index is an index where the entries have been inserted into the content of the book. Embedded indexes have been around for decades, but they’ve been quite clunky until just a few years ago. With tags marking the entries, publishing software such as InDesign or word processing programs like Microsoft […]
Why Are Book Indexes So Inconsistent?
Why are book indexes so inconsistent? All the different variations create all kinds of questions. The short answer is that every index is a custom job. One of the first things new indexer mentees notice when I’ve asked them to evaluate an index from their own point of view is that there are so many variations […]
Evaluating an Index: Finding What Works
I find that an index evaluation exercise is a great way to remind myself and any new indexers I’m mentoring about how important our indexing principles and best practices are to the reader or browser’s experience of a book or other document. It’s actually quite easy to identify some of the worst offenders in index construction. […]
