Michael’s Reviews > Facing the Text: Content and Structure in Book Indexing > Status Update

Indexing is not a clerical job in which the tasks become automatic once you learn the routine. It is highly intense, creative work.

When the sub-headings throughout the index follow a pattern, the fact that you are bringing in some locators from a specific topic is no reason to change your pattern in the broader main entry.

I often find article titles whose very formal wording contrasts with the simpler term used elsewhere in the text.

When a main entry includes subheadings, is it acceptable to leave non-chapter span locators with no subheadings? Here we have another indexing controversy. Earlier in my career I was much more liberal about this than I am now. My current practice is to try to find a useful sub-heading for every locator.

Categorical subheadings are subcategories of the larger category expressed in the main heading.

Topics that the author uses as examples to expand on a point are not indexable...But I have found that this varies more than one would expect...When I know that a topic appears in the text as an example, I stop and think carefully, asking myself whether including it would help the reader.