'I' for Indexing
— Anitha Abraham, Senior Technical Editor, Synopsys (India) Pvt. Ltd.
Why is an index important?
“Someone once said that a book without an index is like a country without a map.
However interesting and worthwhile the experience of driving from A to B without a map might be in its own right, there can be no doubt that when the goal is to arrive at one's destination as quickly as possible (or at least without undue delay), some kind of a map is indispensable.” – Extract from The TAO of Topic Maps.
Similarly, when the goal is to find or retrieve some information quickly and easily, an index provides entries and locators (page numbers), which are extremely useful.
Typically, an index is about 3-5% of the total number of pages in a technical book, and users do not read but scan the information. So it’s essential to have a clear structure, short user-centric entries, and an effective visual layout.
What are the guidelines for writing an effective index?
Here are some guidelines from "Information and Documentation--Guidelines for the Content, Organization and Presentation of Indexes" (ISO 999).
For an effective index, you should:
- identify and locate relevant information within the document being indexed
- discriminate between information on a subject and passing mention of a subject
- exclude passing mention of subjects that offers nothing significant to the potential user
- analyze concepts treated in the document so as to produce a series of headings
- ensure that entry terms used in the index are appropriate to the users of the index, so that they will:
- quickly establish the presence or absence of information on a specific subject in the document
- quickly retrieve information on a remembered item in the document
- indicate relationships between concepts
- group together information on subjects that is scattered by the arrangement of the document
- synthesize headings and subheadings into entries
- direct the user seeking information under terms not chosen for the index headings to the headings that have been chosen, by means of "see" and “see also” cross-references
- arrange entries into a systematic and helpful order
Anitha Abraham currently works as a senior technical editor with Synopsys (India) Pvt. Ltd. Anitha enjoys the challenges of supporting a geographically distributed writing team within her business group in Synopsys. Her editorial experience has been culled from working on various projects, including her current work in the high-tech EDA space, her prior projects in an IT consulting company, and the multi-tasking mayhem in an Internet start-up company. She can be contacted at anithaa@synopsys.com.
STC India | Home | Contact Us