Indexes that Work - 1 day course
You will learn to...
- create comprehensive and usable indexes
- design indexes that work for diverse audiences
- ensure that you indexes meet your audiences' needs.
The Seminar
Many technical writers feel that indexing is a mystery. When they are asked
to index a document, they often don't know where to start. In this seminar,
we'll get you started with a systematic and thorough approach to the indexing
process. You'll work with lots of documents, reviewing good and poor indexes,
marking items and editing first draft indexes.
If you thought that indexing was drudgery, you'll discover it can be lots
of fun. In this inter-active session, you'll meet the challenge of stepping
into you reader's shoes and making a document truly usable.
The Agenda
Objective: to create comprehensive indexes that meet your audience
needs.
What is an Index?
Review the characteristics you want to achieve in a good index and learn
what it takes to be a good indexer. Learn the relationships between a good
index and a good audience analysis. As a group, you'll review successful and
unsuccessful indexes.
Selecting Topics to Index
Selecting the topics to index is the first challenge. You'll select topics
that explain concepts or ideas, define terms, explain abbreviations, restrict
the topic in some way, or contain cross references.
Describing the Topics in the Index
You will write actual index items, using direct quotes, synonyms, related
topics, and transformations. Next, you will work to build subentries and factor
you index entries. Finally, you'll understand how to develop SEE references.
Entering Index Tags
We'll discuss the pros and cons of automated and manual indexing methods.
We will also discuss when to start preparing an index and when to enter index
tags.
Editing the Index
You'll discover that marking the text and entering the index tags is just
the beginning of the process. Editing the index is equally important. You'll
proceed through a checklist of editing issues, such as worked variations,
singulars and plurals, page numbers, transformations, and more.
Testing the Index
You'll review the methods of conducting usability tests of the index to
ensure that all your hard work has been successful.
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