How to index a book – Part 3

Posted on December 5th, 2008 at 8:12 am by admin

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The two previous posts explained the basics of indexing and index structure. This posting will explain how to use MS Word to create an index.

MS Word is a bit clunky for indexing, and it involves a lot of extra typing that you will delete in the end. But it does work if you follow these steps.

1. Don’t alphabetize as you index. Do it later.

MS Word has an automatic alphabetization feature that works reasonably well. So don’t alphabetize as you go. Put down the concepts and key terms in the order they appear.

2. Retype your entries for every sub-entry.

You want your draft index to look like this:

water, drinking, 12-14

water, sources of, 8-9

You’ll delete those extra water words in the final stage. If you leave them out in this first phase, MS Word won’t be able to sort it alphabetically later on. So type every entry in full, with a comma between the main entry and the sub-entry.

Tip: Include a subentry for every entry (unless you know that this term is never mentioned again in the book). You will delete some of the sub-entries in the final phase. Deleting takes less time that looking up the term again to figure out what it was all about!

3. Index two-part entries twice.

For example:

water, drinking, 12-14

drinking water, 12-14

construction, of wells, 15-16

wells, construction of, 15-16

4. Do two passes of each chapter.

First pass: Index broad concepts,  major sections, and main discussions. You can do this quickly, just flipping through the chapter looking at the headings.

Heck, you wrote it! You should know what it’s about!

Second pass: Go back to the beginning of the chapter, and read it slowly. Index key terms, names, and ideas you know you discuss in detail in later chapters. Catch all the small details in this second pass.

4. Save often!

Save as you go.

When you have indexed the whole book, save this first draft as Index Draft.

Then — and this is important, so listen up — save it again as Index 1. You will alphabetize Index 1, not Index Draft.

Why?

Because you want a draft index in page-by-page order you can refer back to in case you screwed up some of the page numbers.