Topic of the Week

Week: 11/19/00

Marking Proof

My method so far has been to create a list of entries, and subs where possibly needed, along with locators on a separate sheet of paper. I don't alphabetize at this point, just create the entries as I read. I can adjust the locators as I need to. Then I take my list to the computer to type the entries. Once I have the index on the screen and alphabetized, I see where I need more subentries, where I can combine entries and where I could possibly cross reference. It's much easier working with my lists of entries rather than juggling the whole manuscript at the computer. Of course I need to go back to the manuscript during the editing process to clarify subs, etc. I also print out a copy of the index at this point so that I can work with paper and pen rather than on the screen. It helps me to spread it out and see more of it at once if I want to.

I've been indexing for more than five years and I still read and mark proofs for most books (I'll talk about the exceptions below.) Like someone has mentioned, I find it easier to concentrate on the substance of the book and choosing index entries if I'm using a pen and highlighter and working on paper, away from the computer.

I highlight words in the text and write other words in the margin, including cross-references that occur to me. I also write down the last page of the range if a discussion continues for more than one page.

I'm still doing it on index cards and a word processor. I felt "tied down" to the manuscript by marking it, I realized a short way into the first book that I had stopped marking, I was just writing directly onto the cards. I then re-read the section, and when I came to a point where a term or concept needed to be noted, I double-checked to see that I had done so, editing the entries as I went. I then alphabetized the cards and typed.

What I do is write a rough (really rough) index on the computer, then print it out in page number order and do a page-by-page edit at my desk away from the computer. After that, I make changes to the computer file, and do all the editorial functions, then print. A case could be made that my first sweep through is "marking proofs," but at the computer.

When doing these scientific books, I will make an initial pass and highlight in 2 colors--one color is for the researchers discussed, and the other color is for mathematical functions that will later get indexed with the text. Then, I go through, and index all the researchers names first. This gives my eyes two passes of the material before I get down to the nitty gritty material. Then, when it's time for actual text, I'm familiar with what's discussed later by another author. The third pass is done is yet another color. My proofs look like a child got hold of them when I'm done!

What I DON'T do is actually form the entries in the book. I highlight only what should be indexed, in one way or another. I tried it once and freaked out. For me, it was too concrete--I needed a more fluid style of indexing. I think better when my fingers are keyboarding, not when highlighting. So, I highlight the thought, but form the entry in the software. And, as I add entries, some of the original entries change--I edit as I go.

Week: 12/16/00

Subject Specialization

I think it makes marketing much easier. I think that for a beginner it is good for their self-confidence. If you know the jargon of your area, then you can concentrate on indexing. If the subject is unfamiliar you have the double whammy of becoming familiar with topic and doing your first professional indexes. It sounds like the first couple ones are slow enough!! I know I will do better work in my specialty subject areas just because they hold my interest. I have a low tolerance for reading things I do not enjoy. I just took a seminar called "But I hate to cold call!" . The presenter definately advocated finding niches and esablishing relationships. She recommended that you send an interesting and memorable packet to your contact. Hopefully when you contact them a week or two later it will not be such a cold call.

It's not for everyone, but I think it helped me. It helped develop internal confidence that I could indeed do indexing, because I understood the nuances of the jargon, both as a new person to the field and as someone experienced in the subject. Focusing only on specialties really gave me a better marketing package overall. I think my confidence, subject understanding, and skills came through in my marketing package and when I was talking with potential clients.

My translation of this is to think that real, hands-on experience with a subject is enough to qualify me for expert status, as far as indexing is concerned. I don't think that the publisher would expect that I be able to represent myself in a court of law as an "expert" but I also wouldn't frivolously assert expertise without hands-on knowledge. When asked about my areas of expertise, I truthfully answer,

psychology and education -- 11 years experience with autistic and behavior-disordered individuals in a clinical setting
sports and recreation -- a lifetime of experience, including all the major and minor sports that you could think of and hiking, biking, running, marathoning, triathloning, swimming, canoeing, sailing, and I don't know what else
history -- an avid interest, college coursework, an extensive reading/reference library, civil war, nautical, and american military being my main areas within history.
celtic/irish -- ditto
New England region -- lived in 5 of the 6 states, avid interest, extensive reading/reference library

I feel that I can competently index in other areas (and I do) but I wouldn't claim "expert" status in any of them.

So, in sum, I guess that I wouldn't worry too much about acquiring more expert knowledge than you already have, Jim. You probably won't know where your gaps are ( or if you have any) until you actually complete some indexes in that field, but that's what all the years leading up to indexing have
prepared you for.

I have also worried that I was not sufficiently proficient in any one area to qualify for indexing that subject. My experience so far, however, has proven that knowledge of indexing in general and your software in particular is more important than indepth knowledge of the subject.

I have done an art catalog on Robert Therrien, an artist of whom I had never heard until I got the job. I believe I did a good job. I also did a scholarly book on the rise and fall of third parties in the Hispanic
community, also a topic in which I had no basic knowledge. I also did a based-on-fact story of the first child abused in America. I do not consider myself an expert in child abuse, but the subject was not difficult. So I have decided that I will tackle nearly anything except for highly scientific subjects that would definitely have to have some expertise.

Week: 12/31/00

Leading prepositions and other function words

I make an effort to eliminate as many prepositions in subheadings as I can. The only criteria that I use is whether the preposition adds to the understanding of the subheading.

Mulvany's index has the following entry: (This is only a partial listing of this entry.)

sorting
    of alphanumeric page numbers*
    with embedded indexing software
    determining method of
    of icons*
     in letter-by-letter alphabetizing

In my opinion, the starred entries do not require the prepositions, but the others are necessary for understanding the entry. I like the use of "and" in some cases at the beginning of an entry. The word
"on" is also useful:

Smith, Mary
on abortion

term selection
and page-number order of subentries

I like "and" also, and I wonder if anyone senses a difference in meaning
depending on the placement (at the beginning or the end of the subheading)?.

term selection
    and page-number order

term selection
    page number order and

Putting it at the end as in the second example moves the key word to the
prominent first position, which you might be tempted to do. But does it also
change the emphasis of the subentry? I think it does. I think that the first
example places the emphasis on the relationship of page-number order TO term
selection, while the second example emphasizes the relationship of term
selection TO page number order. It may be more clear with the following
example:

Lee, Gen. Robert E.
    and Grant

Lee, Gen. Robert E.
    Grant and

I might expect to find the second example in a biography of Grant, while the
first could appear in a Lee bio or a general topic book. The natural reading
of the entries would be, first, Lee and Grant, then Grant and Lee. A change
in emphasis.

I think many prepositions, conjunctions, etc. (I think Mulvany calls them function words) are unnecessary and try to use them only when needed to eliminate ambiguity. On the other hand, in run-on formatted indexes for scholarly books, I sometimes use more function words than in indented indexes for trade books or textbooks. I think the run-on format makes the entry seem more like a sentence. In addition, the subentries in scholarly books are often more wordy than in trade or textbooks.

As for 'and', I'm not as fond of it as Dan is. I think it is not as valuable as more specific words, and although I've heard the distinction between including it at the beginning or the end of the subentry, I think that distinction is probably lost on index readers. I prefer 'and' at the end, so that the word that is alphabetized is at the beginning of the subentry.

In Susan Olason's article on index usability testing in the Oct. 2000 Indexer, she says that indexes without leading prepositions/conjunctions in subentries were rated more useful and were 50% more efficient than those with the leading function words. The people in her study expressed "frustration
about being forced to read rather than scan, confusion about sorting (users did not realize that prefix words were ignored in sort), and confusion about their purpose (did not clarify the main entry/sub-entry relationship."

Mary makes excellent sense. I don't profess an unecessary love of the"and" though. She illustrates clearly that a less ambiguous wording works better, when it is available. There are times, however, especially in biography or history books, when there is no conclusive way to nail down the relationship implied in the text without reducing the subheadings to absurd specificity. It is then that I rely on the "and" to help out. And, although some readers might miss the implications, I think that it is my duty to make them, and if using and in a different location helps to apply meaning to the short fragment of information there, then I feel free and comfortable in using it.

I think that different audiences are able to tolerate different formats within an index. Although helpful, and a good start, I don't think that Susan Olason would say that her article is definitive. This is just a start. Mary admits that run-in format may actually demand a different syntax. I know it affects my thought process when writing indexes.

One factor to consider on this topic is that style for prepositions varies for indexes in different fields. In medical indexing prepositions are heavily used and also have specific meanings. Maria Coughlin discusses the use of prepositions in her workshop on editing medical indexes which I attended a few months ago. I'll give an example directly from her handout.

        "for" is the treatment relationship:
                Leukemia
                    chemotherapy for

Maria also uses "and" to mean "acting on" so if the sub affects the main topic then "and" will be placed at the end, and vice versa. I don't know if that meaning can be used universally, but using Mary Mortensen's example,

corporations
and foundations

would imply corporations acting on foundations, which actually fits Mary's new, more specific example:

   corporations
      foundations created by

Conversely,

    corporations
        foundations and

would imply foundations acting on corporations. For non-medical indexes I agree with Mary that a more specific indication of the relationship is often better than using "and." The downside is that this may increase the length of the index and space constraints may force the use of the shorter option,
"and."

Week: 1/7/01

Double posting: when to do it

My advice is, never ever double-post when you are creating entries. It is my experience that however good you think your memory may be, some day you are going to forget and end up with synonyms with different locators. It's not worth the risk. Even if you are convinced that a term will not appear again in the document, one day it's going to. At the creation stage, *always* make a cross-reference, however tempted you may be to double-post. At the edit stage you will be verifying cross-references to ensure that there are no blind or circular references -- convert cross-references to appropriate double-postings then. (If you are using Cindex, you can get help with this operation by entering a higher figure at "Require at least x matches" in the "Verify Cross-References" box.)

As I continue to practice my skills, I am finding that I can do a great deal of double-posting as I create the index. My mind just does it naturally now. Later I will fine tune these, of course, and I may decide to eliminate/create some entries, but by doing some double-posting on the first run-through I save some time and usually find my first impressions are pretty accurate.

As I create entries, if I think that an entry/subentry pair should be flipped to create a double-posting, I include a note to myself (the word "flip") at the end of the subentry rather than flipping it right then. Sometimes my note is more detailed, for example if I want to post the information in more than one additional place. In the recent book on nonprofits, I created this entry:

grants
     challenge (matching), flip twice

This was to remind me that I wanted to later create two main entries:
   challenge grants
   matching grants

As I go through the book, I only enter the page numbers for that concept in one place. When I reach the end of the book, I find all the "flip"s and do the flipping then. This gives me much more confidence that my double-posted entries have the same page numbers and I don't have to check them during the edit. I also deal with entries that have collected too many locators and need to be treated in some other way.

By the way, I create See cross-references for acronyms as I enter the name that has an acronym. Otherwise I would forget!

Week: 1/20/01

The USDA Indexing Course: Critiques

I consider the USDA course essentially a self-study experience (expensive self-study). The feedback you get on your indexes is necessarily so minimal (because of the distance-learning environment) that you are really just teaching yourself indexing while adhering to the course's rules and directions. So many of the lessons are essentially fill-in-the-blank worksheets requiring common sense ("arrange the following from smaller to larger units: 10 feet, 1 mile, 5 inches.." ARE THEY KIDDING???) or the basic ability to find a sentence in Mulvany/Chicago and copy it onto the worksheet. One lesson asks you to alphabetize foreign names-yet every single name is found verbatim in the Chicago indexing chapter!

Regarding the recognition of the USDA course by editors, I've actually read on this list that publishers don't necessarily care where you got your experience.

I started the USDA course in early 1998, thrilled that there was such a course and that I could do it at my own pace. Hah! The instructor's life was just about to become very complicated, and the lesson turn-around was so slow that it finally took me 2 years to complete the course, and then it was without much satisfaction. I have a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and have taught a fair amount myself, and I had questions to ask here and there. The reply was that I was obviously looking for a mentor, not a teacher (?!). The fill-in-the-blank parts of the lessons seemed a bit silly, and I never did get much in the way of useful feedback on any of my indexes. I finished the course just to have done it, but I don't think the grade I received is at all representative of my ability. In sum, what I gained from the course was little more than a basic knowledge of where to look for information on indexing, and that I could have found in much less time and for much less money.

So perhaps I was just unlucky, perhaps I have an inflated sense of my abilities, perhaps I'd forgotten how to take a course, whatever. In any event, I cannot recommend the USDA course to anyone, and it sounds as if most people interested in becoming indexers have the motivation and ability to learn the art by themselves with the help of such lists as this and the local library.

I'm mostly finished with Lesson 5 and think the course has been worth my money. Yes, I could havelearned it all on my own, but I'm not a good researcher and I don't work well without time limits. Having the course information collected and presented to me in manageable lumps is a good thing. Getting a lesson back and knowing I'm expected to deliver another one are also good things. Any time I've questioned the instructor I've gotten a polite and useful answer within 24 hours. My only complaint is the turnaround time for lessons - my longest wait has been just over five weeks, and the average wait is about three weeks.

When I finish the course I'll have a lot of confidence to start marketing with - confidence I know I would not have had without the course. Some people are just happier with formal instruction, I guess, and I'm one of them.

One thing no one has really mentioned yet is something I feel _very_ strongly about: it requires skills that not only take practice, but require feedback. Indexing is _not_ a skill that you can read about or hear someone speak about and then go out and begin marketing yourself as a professional. Even if you're a natural.

Whether you get feedback on your practice indexes from instructors (in correspondence courses, live courses, or whatever), or feedback from professionals (at peer reviews, through consultation services, through mentoring relationships, or whatever), you _must_ get professional feedback. USDA students - think about that first index you wrote & you thought "I did well on this because I incorporated all I've read about x, y, and z" and then you got comments back and.... well... ugh. Even if you saw, heard, read "you're a natural" or "great job," weren't there still plenty of comments about how certain entries weren't very useful, or how other entries were missing?

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