Archive for the ‘indexing’ Category

IBM Selectric Typewriter

by Bill Ruesch

I nearly tripped over an IBM Selectric typewriter, once the King of all the offices,now leaning against a painted door, relegated  to a basement hallway’s supply closet, forever consigned to be a lowly doorstop.

My, how things have changed.  What was once considered swell was using the word my as an exclamation at the beginning of a sentence, or even using the word swell at all for that matter. I’m not really into archaic slang, it just seemed somehow appropriate to the topic.

Indexing somehow seems like a quaint idea, more fit for the 19th century than the present. After all aren’t there more and better solutions via the Internet and such? Tia Leschke contacted me to ask if an article on indexing would be of interest to Chicken Scratching readers. She sent the information below and we send to her our thanks.

Tia Leschke’s four very important things to consider when it comes to indexing

Tia Leschke -- Indexer

An Index? Why?

You’ve finally finished your book. It’s been edited and proofread and has a wonderful cover design. You’re looking forward to reading sales figures and doing signings. Wait a minute…if it’s a non-fiction book, it should have an index.

Wouldn’t a key word search on an e-book be better?

You wonder, “Why would my book need an index?” If it’s an e-book, you might believe that a simple keyword search function will be sufficient, and maybe it will be. Your readers might get frustrated trying to find the right keyword, though. Let’s say she wonders whether there’s information about vaccines in the infant health book she’s browsing, so she searches on vaccines and finds nothing. The author used the word inoculations. A good index would have a see reference to guide her from vaccines to inoculations. She might also be guided through see also references to information about vaccine safety, as well as the various diseases for which vaccines are available.

Searching for information shouldn’t overwhelm one with a zillion barely connected hits.

We’ve all run Google searches that gave us thousands of hits. Most of us don’t go beyond the first page. In an e-book, the search will stop on every instance of word usage. Let’s say there’s a reader looking for information about using Twitter for business. A general book on social media will refer to Twitter probably hundreds of times, but how many mentions will be relevant to their particular search? Moreover, how much time is wasted by  readers checking every single reference?

Indexing is one of the least respected sales tools.

One more reason for having an index is that it can help a purchaser decide whether to buy your book. If she glances through the table of contents and doesn’t see anything about her particular interest, she might put it back on the shelf without realizing that there’s actually quite a bit there. A glance at the index would show her that, if there’s an index to peruse.

A quick off-the-shelf reference is not so easy to lose.

Whether your readers are wondering whether certain information is actually in your book, or whether they remember something that they want to refer to again, an index is the map for finding that information.

For more information, you can reach Tia at http://ca.linkedin.com/pub/tia-leschke/14/923/a09 or http://tia-leschke.ca