Re: an indexing question

Subject: Re: an indexing question
From: Fabien Vais <phantoms -at- POP -dot- TOTAL -dot- NET>
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 13:46:10 -0400

I may have missed something, but it seems to me that an index is to help the
reader find something that HE or SHE is thinking about. Now, are ALL items
in your database the exact same color? If so, then say so at the very
beginning of the book, not so much to facilitate the indexing procedure, but
to facilitate the reader's search of the topic. Thus there would be only one
index entry for "color". If the color is NOT the same for all items, then I
would recommend your second index approach:
Color
of eggbeaters 7
of forks 12
of toasters 18
of woks 22
etc. etc.

As well, I would put "Color" as a sub entry in the main entries for
"eggbeaters", "forks", etc.

Optionally, you could group the characteristics of items (color, slots,
weight, price, etc.) as main entries, then each item as sub entries to these
entries:
Characteristics
Color
Toaster, 7
fork, 4
blender, 5
etc.
Weight
toaster, 8
fork, 5
blender, 6
etc.
etc.

Your first approach (Color 7, 12, 18, 22, 29, 34, ...) is not helpful to
the reader, as it doesn't tell the reader which of these pages contains the
desired information. And the third approach (Color 7) would only lead me to
the color of ONE of the items, possibly not the one I'm interested in.

Hope this helps,

Fabien Vais
phantoms -at- total -dot- net

At 06:35 PM 6/14/98 +0300, you wrote:
>What do I do about this?
>
>A book of ours describes, among other things, a database. (But
>please keep reading anyway.)
>
>Suppose, for analogy's sake, that we were describing products
>for the kitchen: several kinds of forks, several kinds of
>woks, several kinds of toasters, etc. etc.
>
>In our descriptions of some kinds of items, we use special
>characteristics: only for forks do we list number of tines. Only
>for toasters do we list number of slots. But some characteristics
>are common to all items: weight, color, price, etc. As the
>products are described one after another, those characteristics
>repeat themselves and mean the same thing with regard to each
>product.
>
>In our back-of-the-book index, I have no trouble indexing the
>special characteristics like number of tines. My problem is
>in the characteristics that repeat throughout the database.
>Color appears everywhere, and wherever it appears it is no more
>and no less important than anywhere else.
>
>Should I list it this way?--
>
> Color 7, 12, 18, 22, 29, 34, ...
>
>If I do, then the reader is invited to look in all those places
>and will not know how many of them to check before deciding that
>essentially they all say the same thing.
>
>Should I list it this way?--
>
> Color
> of eggbeaters 7
> of forks 12
> of toasters 18
> of woks 22
> etc. etc.
>
>That takes a lot of space and may falsely imply that the
>information is substantially different from occurrence to
>occurrence.
>
>Should I list it just once? The first occurrence, perhaps?
>
> Color 7
>
>That could imply that the characteristic doesn't exist in
>other places.
>
>Should I burden the book with a section describing common
>characteristics, merely to serve as an index target?
>
>Who has advice?




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