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	New England Chapter American Society for Indexing Past Events

Spring 1999 Conference Workshop Summary

Editing the Index  

A Professional Development Workshop
presented by Kay Banning and Linda Webster

March 27, 1999

Summary by Christine Michaud

The New England Chapter, American Society for Indexing hosted a very successful workshop, "Editing the Index," for a capacity crowd on March 27, 1999 in Waltham, Mass. Approximately 40 indexers and aspiring indexers spent the day listening and discussing as Kay Banning and Linda Webster shared their tips, strategies, and experience about how best to edit the index. Hand-outs, group exercises, and a lively discussion contributed to the success of the workshop.

Banning and Webster, who between them have twenty-five years of indexing experience, led an interesting and informative presentation. Using a "tag-team" approach, they discussed the major areas that indexers should look at during the editing process, including specific "clues" the indexer that may indicate specific problems. Areas covered included how to index a book’s "metatopic," i.e., the major theme of the work; assessing when to break out broad headings into more specific ones or to consolidate closely related headings into one more general one; tightening the wording in headings; deciding whether a concept should be a main heading rather than a sub-heading; and handling the structure of the index, including "see" and "see also" references, double-posts, and working with length restrictions. Useful examples drawn from real indexes illustrated each point, and group exercises helped to show the many possible "right" answers.

Banning emphasized the editing process, for which she recommends up to four passes through the index to look for problems. In each pass, she looks for different things, focusing on each potential problem in turn. Banning’s process is: 1. look for long strings of reference locators and synonymous main headings; 2. look for main headings with lots of subheadings or with only one, examine the wording of subheadings; 3. check for double-posting of synonyms and abbreviations and acronyms; verify all cross-references. She also noted that indexers should budget 1/3 of their time for the editing process. A very useful handout -- the editing checklist, laid out the suggested editing process in greater detail.

Discussion was lively, as attendees brought up specific problems that they had experienced or illustrated various potential solutions from indexes they had worked on. Although many of the attendees were beginning indexers, many interesting problems and creative solutions were brought up for discussion. The workshop was very well organized, and kept to the schedule, despite the extensive discussion. The only complaint attendees had was that the size of the meeting room was too small. It was so crowded that twice people knocked over pitchers of water as they attempted to leave their seats.

The "Editing the Index" workshop was informative and entertaining. I look forward to future educational workshops from MSI.