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What does indexing really mean? In short, it means providing the reader immediate and accurate access to all important points in the material. That does not mean including each and every term in the book. Software would do that automatically for you. Instead, it means gathering all important terms and their relationships and reflecting all that in the index. The reader shouldn't have to look for these relationships themselves. Can't the computer do that? This is always the first thing I'm asked after I describe what indexing is. The best thing that a computer software would be able to do is reproduce the Table of Contents and/or, like I said above, list all the terms that appear in the book. The former would certainly have subheadings but would be totally useless since it would just be the Table of Contents part two. The latter would be flat and not to mention, gigantic, unless you tell it to exclude certain terms or manually delete the entries you do not want afterwards. Even then, the entries would still be isolated and most likely, with long lists of locators. No software would know how to organize the entries in a way that would be useful to the reader. Well, maybe in the future. :) Can't the author do it? Sure thing. They would have to learn how to do it, of course. Indexing a book requires a shift in the way you read the book. It requires, among others, the ability to extract terms and ideas from different parts of the book and gather them into one or more entries in the index. One cannot edit/proofread and index their work at the same time, at least in a manner that would produce a really usable index. They would have to reread the book one more time to index it. Not too many authors are willing to do that. Most of the time, the author is too close to the book that their judgments are affected by their preconceived notions of which topics are important and which ones are not. The indexer will not have any such preconceived notions and so, will approach the text with a clean slate and with the future readers in mind. Also, while one can use a regular word processor to type up the index, the use of one dedicated to indexing, such as CINDEX or SKY, which I use, will speed up the process. They would have to purchase and learn how to use it. Do you really read the entire book? But of course. :) It would be unspeakable disservice, if not a crime, to not read the book. You'd be better off having no index than having an incomplete one. If I need just a short index, I should be able to get it sooner and you'll charge me less, right? Not necessarily. In fact, the reverse is often true. Having too little space to work with entails taking out entries and compromising the overall structure of the index just to fit in that space. Those will take more time and effort. Deciding which entries to cut is tough. Add to that the agony we face when we have to part with those precious entries. If you have other indexing-related questions not covered above, you can reach me here. |
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