Quote:
Originally Posted by bookman156
That is odd, and bad I'd say, but that's their business.
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Nah, it actually made sense once I looked a little bit closer.
It allowed you to:
- Find a given topic/person.
- Get a quick outline/summary in "chronological order".
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I
did ultimately make the decision to split the index from "paragraph form":
into "indented form" though.
In the physical book, especially older books, paragraphs were done for page count reasons.
But in an ebook, there's no worry about how "tall" an index is. And indents are
so much easier to read/skim.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bookman156
Did you link up the page numbers with the text?
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Nah, I don't tend to go out of my way to do that.
But I have written everything there is to know about RPNs (Real Page Numbers) over the years.
Just type into your favorite search engine:
Code:
RPNs Tex2002ans site:mobileread.com
Index Tex2002ans site:mobileread.com
real page numbers Tex2002ans site:mobileread.com
and you'll find hundreds of topics where me+Hitch have discussed every single little detail of that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bookman156
I've only ever created an index once, from scratch, for a book I wrote. [...] The publisher persuaded me I could do a better job than a pro indexer, which was probably true, and saved them money of course.
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No. Professional indexing is a completely different skillset from writing/editing, and I can understand WHY.
See the famous thread:
where I covered that RPNs + cross-referencing/-linking + Indexes in extreme detail.
(Around that time, I spent
months of work recreating/retypesetting a fully linkable Index [to the exact location within the text]... I still haven't finished that project.)
An author would most likely make a horrible Indexer, because you aren't looking at the book as an objective outsider.
An Indexer would be able to categorize keywords/terms/people + know how a typical reader may reference/tackle your book.
(When I spent months researching Indexing + reading documentation at the
American Society for Indexing, I learned to appreciate the sadly neglected/brushed-aside skill.)
People (including me) tended to think:
- "There's no need for indexes in ebooks! Search does all of that and more!"
- "Look at Google!"
No, oh no... how wrong I was... lol.
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Side Note: A month ago, I listened to this fantastic podcast episode:
It, too, described how:
- librarians curate + teach you HOW to research effectively (similar to an Index).
- Where using find + search engines, you'll get a flood of crap.
- so you learn how to use tricks like "site:" in order to effectively narrow down your searches.
Human-curation vs. raw search
(Similar to Indexes vs. Search/Concordances in ebooks.)
That podcast episode was one of the best ones I've heard in years + it put its finger on issues that have been niggling away at me for more than 10 years.
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Side Note #2: If you want even more of my writings on how to take advantage + actually
utilize the power of Indexes, see:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bookman156
Still, I had some fun with it, my favourite entry was:
- Wen, King, supernumerary nipples of
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One of my favorite terms is "supernumerary specimen":
Quote:
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For animals (and plants) it is always and invariably true that an increase in their number will encroach upon the available means of subsistence and eventually lead to overpopulation, to “supernumerary specimens,” as Mises has called them, which must be “weeded out” due to a lack of sustenance. Today, we know that as far as humans are concerned, this must not be so: no supernumerary specimens who are thus weeded out exist in modern, western societies. But for most of human life this was indeed the case.
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Talking about that horrible Malthus/Malthusianism. :P
(Another great term is: "architectonic edifice".)