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	New England Chapter American Society of Indexers Past Events

Spring 2000 Conference Workshop Summary

Embedded Indexing - How To

A Professional Development Workshop
presented by Peg Mauer

March 25, 2000

"Embedded Indexing: What is it and How do I do it?" was held in Worcester, on March 25. The presenter was Peg Mauer, an experienced indexer and technical writer who specializes in writing embedded indexes. A group of twenty-three participants from Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York and Tennessee as well as Massachusetts, evaluated the 3-hour session as highly successful in delivering what was promised.

The workshop was sponsored by the Massachusetts Society of Indexers (MSI) as part of its continuing series of professional development offerings. The assessment feed-back confirmed Peg's well-deserved reputation as a skilled presenter. No small achievement because the background of the participants varied from novice indexer, to those with considerable experience with back-of-the-book indexing. A few of the participants are already practicing the newly emerging art of "embedded" indexing. Peg's years of experience as a technical writer/editor, combined with both traditional and embedded indexing expertise, really showed through. She communicated clearly, without resorting to mind-numbing jargon, the technical aspects of electronically inserting index entries into the text in computer files. Thankfully, not advertised as "embedded indexing for dummies," Peg left participants a lot smarter about the "why’s" as well as the "how-to’s" of embedding indexing.

The workshop provided an excellent understanding of: what embedded indexing is, what its advantages and disadvantages are, how it is similar and different from using dedicated indexing software, why the indexer is justified in charging higher rates, and a generous portion of "helpful hints." All of this was entertainingly presented with the lively give-and-take Peg encouraged with her informal, yet well-organized approach, including very useful hand-outs. She effectively used a portable computer to project images on a large screen to illustrate the details involved in inserting terms into the text being indexed. She used Microsoft Word for the main part of her presentation, but also briefly illustrated writing embedded indexes in FrameMaker. (Readers wanting to know more may consult Peg's articles on embedded indexing in Word and FrameMaker, respectively, in the Jan/Feb and Sep/Oct, 1998 issues of Key Words.)