Indexing Books: a Review*

This book is a distillation of many years of indexing experience. Most professional indexers learn this kind of information in a hit-or-miss fashion over 10-15 years of continuous indexing. Mulvany has performed a great service to the profession by putting it all together in one place. It reflects not only her own experience as an indexer, but that of many colleagues as well.

How Does it Stack Up?

The only comparable book on indexing is Wellisch's Indexing from A to Z, but the very arrangement of his book precludes its use as a guide to the indexing process. Although very readable and packed with information that you may not find anywhere else, it not geared toward novice indexes. You have to know quite a bit about indexing before you can find the topic of interest. It is geared toward the professional indexer for use as a reference tool.

Indexing Books, on the other hand, is targeted toward people who are just learning to index. It flows from the definition of an index to getting started with indexing, through the structure of entries, the arrangement of entries, the format and layout of indexes, to editing and delivering the index. Both the arrangement and the content succeed very well.

What's Included?

The first chapter is an introduction to book indexing. In addition to definitions, it also covers the audience and criteria for the ideal index.

Chapter 2, The Author and The Index, is for the author who suddenly discovers he is responsible for producing an index. This chapter will help the author decide whether to write the index himself or to contract with a profes­sional indexer. Book contracts, in relation to index requirements, and contracts between authors and indexers are discussed.

In my opinion, chapter 3, Getting Started, is worth the price of the whole book. The author describes how indexers work, the book production process, what parts of the book are indexable, and—the real heart of indexing—how to select terms and how to translate marked up manuscript into index entries.

This chapter is also noteworthy for its presentation of indexing style guides. Mulvany surveyed a number of publishers and prepared a chart comparing their in­dexing specifications. She also explains the elements of index style and shows samples that conform to various requirements.  Another unique feature of this chapter is the methodology for estimating index size.

Chapter 4, Structure of Entries, covers a multitude of topics, including main headings, subentries, locators, and cross-references, the external and internal structure of the index, classified entries, and double-posting of entries. The section on locators is very thorough, including page ranges; compression or elision of page ranges; the use of passim, F., and ff; multipart page numbers; locators that are not page numbers; and annotated page numbers, that is, page references that also indicate illustrations, tables, footnotes, endnotes, and other special types of information.

Letter-by-letter and word-by-word al­phabetization are compared in chapter 5, and variations and special publisher requirements are deplored. How to alphabetize function words (articles, prepositions, and conjunctions), how to handle homographs (words that are spelled alike), and when to sort subentries in chronological order conclude the discussion.

Topics introduced in chapter 5 are treated more fully in chapter 6, Special Concerns in Indexing. How to arrange numbers, symbols and other nonalphanumeric characters comprises the bulk of this chapter, and is one of the best discussions you will find. Also covered are what to do with abbreviations and acronyms, and oddities related to uppercase vs. lowercase letters. Problems encountered with multiauthored works and multivolume works, when to include more than one index for a book, and how to deal with translations complete the chapter.

Names, Names, Names: the title of chapter 7 says it all. This chapter may be the only reference most indexers need to handle straightforward indexes (if such a thing exists). Personal names (with all their quirks), geographic names, and organization names are included, along with abundant examples and helpful reference sources.

Chapter 8, Format and Layout of the Index, expands on the style guide material in chapter 3 and goes into extensive detail on the format and placement of cross-references. Preparation of the printed and electronic versions of the index is described, including generic coding of the file.

Editing the index, the topic of chapter 9, is not just something that happens once you finish making entries. As Mulvany explains, "editing is an integral component of the indexing process. As an indexer works with the text, editing decisions are made along with entry selection decisions.... The index is molded and remolded throughout the first 'sweep' through the text." The chapter includes an editing checklist, and goes on to describe both the author's and the editor's role in editing. Reducing the length of an index and revising an index for a revised edition conclude the chapter.

In chapter 10. Tools for Indexing, the 3 x 5 cards method and computer-assisted indexing are both described. The bulk of the chapter, however, is devoted to the problems of using embedded indexing modules that are included in word processing and page layout software. Automatic indexing, including KWIC and KWOC index generation, are briefly described.

Appendices include an index specification worksheet, the ASCII table, summaries of generic codes for various languages and mathematical symbols, and a list of resources for indexers.

What's Missing?

Mulvany restricts the text to book indexing. There is no discussion of periodical indexing or newspaper indexing, and only brief mention of the use of a controlled vocabulary or thesaurus for large projects. Neither does the author talk about database indexing, which is more akin to book cataloging than book indexing. Of course, the principles of identifying indexable material, described in chapter 3, are relevant to database indexing as well.

The book would have been easier to use if the publisher had provided a more detailed table of contents. The index, written by Carolyn McGovern, is excellent; however, to obtain a quick overview of a book, a detailed table of contents is required. The subsections within each chapter would also be easier to find if the book designer had used a bolder font and more space between headers and the text they describe.

Buy This Book!

Not only is this book instructional, but it's also a pleasure to read. The writing is clear, logical, and impassioned. Impassioned? Yes. The author's love of indexing and her desire that it be done correctly and done well are evident throughout. Just read the excerpts that appeared in KEY WORDS (vol. 2, no. 1, Jan/Feb 1994) and you'll see what I mean.

If you could buy only one book on indexing, this is the one.

*Fetters, Linda K. "Indexing Books: a Review," Key Words 2, no. 5 (1994): 10-11.