Hello, I’ve gotten a few questions recently about increasing speed while indexing, including last week’s Q&A about subheadings. And while these are good questions and we can certainly discuss specific ways to increase speed, I think it is also important to keep in mind the foundations of speed, which I learned twenty years ago while learning how to plant trees. Tree planting, if you are unfamiliar, is seasonal work in which crews of mostly young people replant forests after the loggers have...
16 days ago • 5 min read
Hello, Thank you to everyone who participated in my survey last month, asking what more I might do to help you continue to grow and learn in indexing. The responses are very helpful. A monthly Q&A received the most votes. So I am going to give that a try, starting today. I will reply to a new question on the last Tuesday of every month. I’ve created a simple survey for you to submit questions. You can find the survey here. I have also included a link in the footer below, so you can ask a...
23 days ago • 8 min read
Hello, I want to write today about a request I receive maybe a couple of times a year, which is to update a previously written index. The usual advice is to avoid updating and to rewrite the index from scratch. The rationale, as counterintuitive as it may seem, is that rewriting the index is often easier and faster than mucking about in the original index. And yet, is rewriting always the best option? Like almost everything in indexing, it depends. I updated an index last month and decided to...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
Hello, Last week was a strange work week for me. I had two indexing tasks to complete, neither of which I typically do or enjoy. The week felt like a long grind, like I wasn’t really indexing even though I was. My first and primary task was to update an index for a revised edition of a book I originally indexed in 2022. Instead of rewriting the index from scratch, I agreed to update the original index, which ended up being more work than I anticipated. I still think updating the index was the...
2 months ago • 6 min read
Hello, I am back home and catching up on sleep after attending the Indexing Society of Canada/Société canadienne d’indexation (ISC/SCI)’s annual conference, held this year at the University of British Columbia (UBC), in Vancouver. I enjoy attending the Canadian conferences. Being Canadian myself, ISC/SCI feels like “my” society in a way that the American Society for Indexing (ASI) doesn’t, even though I am currently a member of both and ASI has a lot to offer too. It is a treat to see and...
4 months ago • 3 min read
Hello, I’ve been freelancing for almost thirteen years now, and I feel like I am at another juncture at which I am reassessing my business and contemplating how best to move forward. I periodically find myself here. This is partly driven by external factors, often the need to earn a little more due to changing financial needs. I’m no longer the twenty-something kid I was when I first began freelancing, renting a small room in a dilapidated former convent and cruising around Vancouver on my...
4 months ago • 4 min read
Hello, Thank you to all of you who replied to my brief survey on whether or not to create an audio version of Book Indexing: A Step-by-Step Guide. Your responses have been very helpful. So far the response is overwhelmingly, though not quite 100%, against an audio version, and for many of the reasons that I’ve been hesitant so far. Specifically, that it can be difficult to focus and follow along when listening to nonfiction (compared to fiction), and that being able to see the indexing...
5 months ago • 4 min read
Hello, Welcome to this last reflection in the mini-series on the basic elements of an index! Over the last three months I’ve discussed entries and arrays, main headings and subheadings, locators, cross-references, and format. Today I look at sorting. Sorting and format are like twins. They both have to do with how the index is arranged. But whereas format is more about the visual aspect of the index—how the index appears on the page—sorting is about how entries and arrays are arranged one...
5 months ago • 3 min read
Hello, Over the last few weeks, I’ve been exploring the components of an array—main headings and subheadings, locators, and cross-references. It’s time to now look at how these are all held together. Formatting the index, by which I mean either run-in or indented format, along with punctuation, has to do with the visual structure of the index. It is what the reader sees on the page. An index is not written like conventional prose, with complete sentences, capitalization, and closing...
6 months ago • 4 min read