□ Not sure what a preposition and a conjunction is? Time to brush up on your title capitalization skills. ![]() If you take a closer look at the entry for “cultures,” you’ll see that it is indeed followed by a number of prepositions and conjunctions, all there to help you read through it quickly. Index created by Heather Pendley for Orly Clerge’s The New Noir: Race, Identity & Diaspora in Black Suburbia. Here’s a real example of a run-in index, created by Heather Pendley, member at large and Training Course Administrator of the American Society for Indexing. For that reason, it’s more likely to make use of prepositions (e.g., “founders of” instead of “founders”) to make the experience a little more like reading an ordinary paragraph. ![]() The run-in format tends to save a lot of vertical space, but can be a little harder to scan. Reedsy: founders of, 1, 3 self-publishing tips, 2, 5-9, 13-25 weekly writing contest, 28, 31 online learning courses, 44. Indented indexes begin a new, indented line for each new subentry, followed by locators, and look something like this:Ī run-in index, on the other hand, doesn’t allocate a new line for each subentry, instead clustering them all after the heading and separating them with semicolons. It doesn’t make a huge difference to readers, but there are actually two ways to format an index: indents and run-in lines. □ Not sure which order editing rounds tend to happen in? Head over to our post on the different types of editing to find out how it all comes together. Then, imagine the author decides to make some revisions that jumble up all the page numbers - noooo!īy the time indexing takes place, the manuscript will have been laid out by a book designer and page numbers finalized, ensuring the accuracy of the indexer’s notes, and the inner peace of anyone working on this book. Imagine an indexer meticulously combing through a manuscript and noting down important subjects and the page numbers where they are discussed. They are typically created at the end of the processįor an indexer to maintain their sanity, the indexing process is typically the last step in a book’s publishing trajectory, or it happens at the same time as the final proofread, which is unlikely to cause major pagination problems. Now that we know why indexes are needed, let’s take a peek behind the curtain to see how they’re made. Note: The word “index” originates from Latin, so you may sometimes see the plural as “indices.” Both “indexes” and “indices” are correct. In fact, they’re so important that libraries are unlikely to even shelve academic works that don’t have indexes. Because of the scale at which academic research is conducted, their presence can make the research process incredibly more efficient, helping identify relevant works quickly. In the academic realm, indexes are absolutely essential. Done! Essential elements of academic publishing If someone wants ro reference a particular passage in your self-help title, they can look it up in the index and flick straight to that page. It provides the author with an opportunity to highlight the most relevant aspects of the text, and can be a vital tool in enhancing the book’s worth.”Ī detailed index is also useful to people who have already read your book. ![]() “A well-designed index can help readers have a better connection to your book, making the information contained within more accessible and easier to navigate. Professional indexer and Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading member Mark Swift points out that your book becomes more valuable to readers if it has an index. □ Read more about how Reedsy helped Phillip Goodrich find success. ![]() Stewart” - if they’re listed, he can then refer to the page numbers noted. With indexes, he can quickly check for entries for “James Somerset” and “English Court cases,” or a subentry on “Somerset v. Without indexes, he’d be forced to read them all cover to cover in hopes of learning about the Somerset case. Goodrich might have two piles of books in front of him: books relating to English Court cases and to the Civil War. Picture someone searching for information on a specific subject - take historical fiction author Phillip Goodrich, who was writing a novel about the connections between the English court case of Somerset v. Index created by Mark Swift for Rachel Holmes’ T he Secret Life of Dr James Barry. That’s where an index comes in, providing you with a map to the book’s content. Sometimes, you just need a way to dive in and efficiently extract the information you need. Novels tend to be read cover-to-cover, but this isn’t always the case with nonfiction books, especially academic or reference works. Click to tweet! An index gives readers a way to navigate your book
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