Welcome to the last Tuesday of the month. It’s time for another Q&A. Today’s question comes from Clara, who writes:
I’ve been learning indexing in my free time (and admittedly have plenty of it these days!) and would love some book recommendations to practice on — ideally titles that already have professional indexes so I can compare my work. I’ve heard that even between two skilled indexers, their results can differ by about 20–30%, which makes sense since indexing is as much an art as it is a technical craft. Do you have any suggestions for how I can tell whether my index is on the right track? When comparing mine to the published version, what kinds of differences are worth noticing or learning from?
Thank you, Clara. That is a great question. I think there is a lot here to unpack.
You are right that each indexer is unique and will not create the exact same index as someone else. This can make comparisons between indexes tricky because differences between indexes are not necessarily wrong.
I am not going to recommend specific titles to practice on. I don’t know what books are available to you, or what your background and interests are. But I do have a few ideas for how to practice effectively.
Even though each indexer will write a different index, all good indexes should still be grounded in indexing best practices. So to start, I recommend becoming familiar with best practices, both as a lens for analyzing other indexes and as a guide when writing your own.
The American Society for Indexing (ASI) has a handy PDF of best practices available here (I’ve had some trouble with the link, so if it doesn’t work, look for the best practices PDF in the sidebar). For a more concise listing, I recommend looking at the criteria for both the ASI Indexing Awards and the Indexing Society of Canada/Société canadienne d’indexation (ISC/SCI)’s Ewart-Daveluy Award. These are what the judges are looking for when assessing nominations, and are also good guides for what to incorporate in your own indexes.
Once familiar with the qualities of an excellent index, start dissecting published indexes. You can start with the award winners. How do these indexes reflect best practices? What is similar across all of these indexes? What is different? Get a feel for how these indexes work and what you may want to borrow. ISC/SCI makes available all winning indexes, here. For some reason, ASI only makes available some (and primarily older) award-winning indexes, which you can find here.
In addition to prize-winning indexes, examine any index that you can find on your bookshelf, including terrible indexes. How do they exhibit best practices, or not? If an index seems terribly written, can you pinpoint why? How could those indexes be improved? I think understanding what doesn’t work can be just as valuable as understanding what does work. Something can be learned from any index, whether well-written or not.
Now that you have a better feel for indexing best practices and how they are used—or not used—try incorporating best practices into your own indexes.
One way is to deliberately practice. Identify one or two best practices to work on and be intentional about improving those aspects as you draft and edit your index. As you become more comfortable with those aspects, move on to incorporating another best practice.
You can also borrow techniques that you find in other indexes. I did this when I indexed Canada’s Army: Waging War and Keeping the Peace, Third Edition, by J.L. Granatstein. The book contains a lot of detail about dozens of military units across multiple wars. I struggled to figure out an effective way to organize all of that information into a structure that was comprehensive yet still easy to search. I browsed at least a half-dozen military histories before I found an index that I liked and which I thought I could adapt. If you find a particular approach that you like, by all means try using it yourself. Remember, though, that not all techniques work in all contexts. You may need to adapt techniques to fit the contents of the book or try a different technique altogether. Part of being a good indexer is having a few strategies on hand to pick and choose from.
You can also practice different approaches within the same index. You don’t need to rewrite the index multiple times. Rather, conduct a thought experiment. What is another way to structure the index? How would you trim the index by a quarter, if space was a limiting factor? By half? How could you handle cross-references differently? How would these decisions affect the index, for better or worse?
One final word of advice: When practicing, practice on easier books, whatever easier means for you. Indexing techniques are the same whether the book is difficult or easy, so I think better to practice on something easier so that you can be more focused on indexing decisions rather than getting bogged down trying to understand the book. As you become more familiar with indexing, it will become easier to apply those same skills to more difficult books. This was my experience, as I wrote my first several indexes while working in-house for a trade publisher. By the time I indexed my first scholarly book, it was less intimidating and felt like a natural progression because I had experience to build upon. In contract, I remember one new indexer I mentored who floundered after choosing a book to practice on that even experienced indexers would have struggled with. That indexer did have a background in that subject, but even so, it proved too challenging when combined with practicing indexing skills. So do yourself a favor and choose an easier book. Harder books can wait.
It is important to learn how to analyze your own indexes and to know how your indexes compare. To do that, it is important to understand and recognize best practices, both in your own indexes and in indexes written by others. So spend some time reviewing best practices and using them as a lens to analyze. Learn to identify specific strategies and techniques, and then apply those lessons to your own indexes. If you can do that, you are well on your way to writing excellent indexes yourself.