Indexing

by Kathie Gregory
21st August 2015

What is the best way to go about creating an index for my non fiction book? My only thought was to use Word to search through the text! Thanks

Replies

By the way, that's another reason for not using the Word search facility unless you're going to go through it manually afterwards. Context is everything.

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Lorraine
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Lorraine Swoboda
22/08/2015

Kathie, don't reference a word if it isn't important at that point. Approach it exactly as you have just done - with common sense and from the reader's perspective. That's who you are writing the index for, after all.

Lorraine

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Lorraine
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Lorraine Swoboda
22/08/2015

Hi Albert,

thanks for this insight, it's very helpful to know what readers want - and what they find annoying! I will make sure it is detailed enough. Can I ask another question, would I be right or wrong in thinking that it may be annoying to reference every instance of the word, even when there is no context, it's just in passing?? I know I find pointless references annoying, as I'm looking them all up, only to find that the paragraph is not relevant to the usage or understanding of the word. But that may just be me!!

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Kathie
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Kathie Gregory
22/08/2015