Dear Accumulated Wisdom:
I'm starting to index a large collection of essays
that I've edited. This will be my first indexing job and I've read all the
"required texts," including the Chicago Manual of Style chapter on indexing and
the wonderful book by Nancy Mulvany. I feel ready--and have done some
preliminary work--but I'm finding that each of the essays is so different, it's
difficult to decide what not to index. For example, many essays include
paragraphs that list things without really talking about any of them
individually, e.g., rare items in the collection, or curatorial departments of
the museum, or different publications or Web sites or whatever. All of
this is good information in the context of the essay, but unless a particular
item is actually discussed, I'm not sure I should index it. In any event,
if I index all of these individual items, the index will be too long and my
publisher has told me there is a limit and it will have to be cut if it
exceeds the maximum length. So I do have to come up with some general
rules--don't I?
If you have experience in editing a collection of
papers, I would love to hear from you within the next few days. Many
thanks.
Joan Benedetti
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