An indexing question, responses to

Subject: An indexing question, responses to
From: "Mark L. Levinson" <mark -at- MEMCO -dot- CO -dot- IL>
Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 11:47:56 +0300

Earlier this month, I asked how repetitive information in
a database should be treated in a back-of-the-book index.
For example, if a dozen items in the database have "color"
as a characteristic and color is described in essentially
the same terms everywhere, do I list a dozen pages for
"color" in the index? Or use sub-entries according to where
the characteristic appears, despite the lack of difference
in the information, thus inflating the size of the index?
Or for no reason other than making the index usable, do I
augment the book with a section containing context-independent
descriptions of the characteristics and link the index to that?

Thanks to everyone who responded: Amy, Dave, Shannon, Dick,
David C., Julia ("I have never been irritated by an index that
gave me more information than I needed!"), Stuart, Fabien,
Cheryl, Martha, Reinhard, Mike ("Watching somebody use your
index can be a strange experience"), and David L.

The consensus favored sub-entries, while some writers
emphasized that usability of the body of the book is important
too, as are rotated entries (besides "color, of eggbeaters,"
also "eggbeaters, color of"). There was a bit of support for
the idea of context-independent descriptions as well, so that
the characteristic could have a "major" index entry.

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