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Re: [GWL]: Timber Press/Computer Indexing (long)

Dear Carol,

In your e-mail, you said your publisher would give you "software that would 
take care of much of the indexing" for you. 

Oh, if it were only that easy! What your publisher will provide you with will 
basically prepare a concordance, not an index. So, first, let's differentiate 
between a concordance and an index.

A concordance is a listing of all of the occurrences of words or phrases 
within a document, say, for example, Acer rubrum. It does not tell you 
anything about what is on the page, only that those particular words or 
phrases appear on that page. Thus, you could end up with an index entry like 
this:  

        Acer rubrum, 23-4, 48, 69, 91-92, 138-39, 159, 189, 200-202, 240

The reader has no way of knowing where in this string of pages the 
information he or she is looking for appears, only that that particular plant 
is mentioned on those particular pages. He or she must go to each page to 
ascertain if what is being sought is there.

This is basically the kind of entry you can expect from indexing the add-ons 
included with word processing programs and with other automatic indexing 
software programs which claim to automatically prepare indexes from the text.

An index, on the other hand, is a listing of the topics discussed in the 
text, presented in a logical, hierarchical order of headings and subheadings 
which will make it easy and fast for the reader to access that information.

Thus, the listing for Acer rubrum, from above, would, for example, read as 
follows:

        Acer rubrum
            cultivars, 23-24
            diseases, 48, 91-92, 240
            insect pests, 69, 138-139, 159
            propagation, 200-202

Presented thus, the reader can quickly find what is being sought, without the 
annoyance of having to look through unrelated material to no avail.

In the case of a trade book for the general public, a concordance is 
insufficient, since it cannot by its very nature take into account the 
varying educational and knowledge levels of the readership, and the synonyms 
the readership may use for searching, synonyms which may not actually appear 
anywhere in the text and, thus, cannot be marked and included as a locators. 
This is one reason why indexers double post entries whenever appropriate and 
possible -- to try to make the text accessible to the entire audience, using 
whatever term or terms the audience may use -- even if that term is not in 
the text itself. Thus, for a book for the general public, the indexer might 
very well double post Acer rubrum (swamp maple, red maple) as follows, even 
if the words "swamp maple" or "red maple" do not appear in the text:

        Maple
            swamp. See Acer rubrum
            red. See Acer rubrum

In this way, the text is accessible by a raw layman who only knows the term 
red maple, for example, but who hasn't a clue as to the tree's scientific 
name. In a computer-generated index, this kind of posting is not possible, 
since the terms being used here don't appear in the text at all.

No software, including the expensive, high-powered indexing software indexing 
professionals use, can analyze text, apply synonyms, think for the reader, 
and logically group topics and subtopics automatically; only the human brain 
can make these kinds of intellectual decisions.  All the software, any 
indexing software, can do is make the alphabetization, formatting, and 
punctuation of the index easier. In other words, the indexing software is to 
the index what the word processing software is to the writer, only a 
glorified (and very expensive) pencil!  Thus, the writer's software doesn't 
create his or her book -- it only makes it physically easier and faster to 
prepare the text; similarly, the indexer's software doesn't create the index 
-- it only makes it physically easier and faster for the indexer to write, to 
create, the index. As I said, a glorified pencil!

So, Carol, to give you a short answer (after writing a treatise to explain 
it, I do believe!), the answer is, unfortunately, there is no indexing 
software which can create an index; only a human can create an index -- the 
software only takes the place of a typewriter and card files in the process 
-- a welcome technical improvement, to be sure, but not ever a substitute for 
the ability of the human brain, whether it be that of the author or that of a 
professional indexer, to synthesize, analyze, and collect the information 
presented into a coherent whole, making that information accessible to 
whomever the reader may be, regardless of his or her educational level.

Now, as to whether or not an author should write his or her own index and if 
not, how do you find an indexer if your publisher leaves you dangling without 
a clue --  but that's a subject for another e-mail sometime!!!

Lina

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