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.

So you have decided to be an indexer. Maybe you have taken a course to learn how to index, and perhaps you have started to build your bridge so that you can transition to full-time freelance indexing. But still, a question remains (well, probably several questions, but we’ll get to the others later). How do you become good at indexing?

I have heard some new indexers talk about the course which they have taken as being a good starting point, but they are still not confident in their indexing abilities. They still have questions about how to construct a index, or about what terms to include, or about when subheadings are necessary and how to phrase the subheadings. This is an astute observation on the part of the new indexer, and I think it reveal the importance of practice.

About ten years ago, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea of needing to put in 10,000 hours of practice in order to achieve excellence. That claim is much disputed (more about that, and practice, here), and I do not think that you need to put in 10,000 hours to become an excellent indexer. Practice, though, is still important, especially deliberate, focused practice, in which you are able to be aware of what you are creating, and to find ways to improve. This ties nicely into the idea of life-long learning and professional development. I still try to improve my craft, even though I have been indexing for about seven years now, and have written around 200 indexes. I believe that I can get better.

The good news from this is that you do not need to be an expert to start freelancing. You need to be good enough so that you can do a decent job. You do, after all, want the client to hire you again or to recommend you to others. But practice is, essentially, deliberate doing, and once you have achieved a certain level of competency, you can practice as you work. 

But still, how to practice? Especially if you are at the start of your freelance career and no one has hired you yet. Perhaps you are like the new indexers I have talked to who have completed training, but are not yet confident in their abilities. There still are ways that you can practice. Practicing now, before your first paid job, will solidify your skills, give you confidence for when you do land that first job, and might also give you a portfolio which you can use to market yourself.

Here are a few suggestions for how to practice.

• Critique published indexes. Examine the indexes that are already on your bookshelf, visit the library, or browse indexes on Amazon using the Look Inside function. What does the index do well? What is done poorly? Is there anything unique about the index? Any rules broken? Why does it work or not work? Try to critique both poorly written indexes and excellent indexes. What differentiates the two? Look at several indexes from within the same subject or genre. What makes the good ones good? This is actually how I learned how to index. I had a short-term work placement with a university press, and one day I was handed an index, the press’ indexing guidelines, and the Chicago Manual of Style chapter on indexing. My job was to figure out if the index was ready for publication, and, if it was not, to fix it. After doing this several times, I was ready to try writing my first index.

• Find a book or report and index it. This can be a book off of your shelf or a PDF pulled from the internet. It can already have an index or you could be writing its first index ever. The point is that you are writing an index. No one is paying you for it, but you can use the resulting index in your portfolio.
• Volunteer your indexing services for a friend or local society. I know that as professionals, paid work is what we strive for, and I do not want to advocate doing too much for free. However, if you are trying to build confidence, your skills, and/or a portfolio, and you know of a person or group that could use an indexer, volunteering to write an index might be a win-win situation for one or two projects. Be clear on your reasons for taking on the project, and be clear with the client on the parameters of the project, and this could be a good stepping stone towards your freelance career.
• Ask for feedback from other indexers. And, see if you can critique other indexers’ works-in-progress. This can be a great way to both gain feedback and see what others do. If you are interested in this, there is an email group, Index Peer Reviewers, for this very purpose.

Practicing can feel like a chore, and it can feel disconnected from what you really want to do, which is to be a professional freelance indexer. But if you keep that goal in mind, and take the time now to practice, either while waiting for that first paid job to arrive or in anticipation of launching your freelance career, I think you will find that you will have greater confidence in your abilities, and be working at a higher level, which will help you find success sooner as a freelancer. So pick an approach and start practicing today.

The Freelance Career Launch Series is a set of posts about how to start your freelance career. The focus will be on indexing, because that is what I do, but the principles are universal.