Book Review

Newsletter of the East Bay Chapter of STC March/April 2003	Book Review: The Art of Indexing

	by Paul Hayward MISTC The Art of Indexing, Larry S. Bonura, John Wiley & Sons, 1994, ISBN 0-471-01449-4 ISTC, Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators, based in the UK, is a member organization of INTECOM and the largest UK body representing professional communicators and information designers. For more information, visit the ISTC site.
The Importance of an Index	The reader of a technical document all too often needs to find the answer to a problem in a hurry. In this book, Bonura suggests that the steps a reader might take to find the answer are: Ask a friend or co-worker for help. Look in the manual for a few seconds, at most. Call technical support or customer service. Find a work-around or hack it out. In this scenario, the index is the shop window of the manual in the few seconds it takes readers to decide whether it can be of service. If the index places the required information at the reader’s fingertips, then the support desk may be saved a call. As the index is often used as the initial point of access to the material, it is an essential component of any technical document.
Creating an Index	Bonura refers to the type of information that helps to solve a problem as “how-to” information. And the type of index that contains this sort of information (like a good user manual) is task-oriented, not function-oriented. But how can you discover what type of questions your readers are likely to ask? To respond to the need for how-to information, Bonura proposes the “answer-the-questions” approach. This, he says, requires most indexers to change their mind-set: “You have to think ‘What question would a user of this product have that is answered by the text?’ and avoid thinking ‘This text is about something.’” To achieve this, Bonura suggests creating a list of customers’ questions by listening to product support calls and visiting customers to talk to them about beta trial or existing products. Bonura’s book is an exhaustive treatment of indexing. Topics covered include choosing the topics for index references, techniques for developing indexes (both manual and electronic), formatting, editing, indexing standards, and general indexing tips. In this book you’ll find such useful information as how to estimate an index for both size and time, and how to test it for usability. Does your last index measure up to one of Bonura’s tests: namely that it should have a double-column page for every 20 pages of text?
A Minor Flaw	A drawback of Bonura’s book is that it is so exhaustive that it can be exhausting! The book is so comprehensive that you sometimes have to wade through some rather obvious information before arriving at the nuggets of wisdom. For example, we are told that “a well-developed index significantly improves a document’s usefulness,” that the inability to find information can lead to “customer dissatisfaction with documentation,” and that a good indexer must have an orderly mind, be motivated and dedicated.
Conclusion	This problem apart, the book is well written. Chapters are split into manageable chunks, with the longest only spanning eight pages—digestible even for readers with the shortest attention spans! The chapters are split into short sections with plenty of bulleted lists. Each chapter begins with a quotation about indexing from sources ranging from computing magazines to Shakespeare (surprisingly). I think that the book will be a useful addition to your reference library, if only to be used in the way that customers often use technical manuals—that is, for dipping in to find information. To this end, you could do no better than to dip in to the Appendix, which contains a sample indexing style guide that summarizes much of the useful material from the book. And by the way, in case you’re wondering, the book has a fine index.

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