Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author
Published by Addison Gast at Smashwords
Copyright © 2011 by Addison Gast
All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Index Your Ebook Easily
How to do your index in MSWord in a jiffy
By Addison Gast
You can find as many definitions for the word INDEX as there are stars in the sky. The most simple and descriptive term is, I believe; An Index lists the terms and topics in a document, along with the pages they appear on. Pretty well said for the basics I’d say but if you were to go into a really deep research for the word using say, The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition ,you would find no less than one hundred ten pages of how to format, the fonts used, even indexes in indexes. A bit of overload for our purpose of just telling the reader what is in the book and where, what page to find it on. In A manual of Style-a guide to the basics of good writing, prepared by the U.S Government Printing Office, the writers get a little more into detail by telling us that “Indexes and tables of contents are set in the same style as the text, except that See and see also are set in italic”. A further instruction that will become relevant here is the instruction ; Page , section, paragraph, etc. Over figure columns are set in roman, flush on right”
Ok, we are getting the structure of WHAT an index should look like and describe—somewhat. For more detail on that topic let’s go look at what “The New York Public Library Writers has to say.
Three factors are involved in determining the level of detail used in an index---the intended audience, the time available for completion and the space allotted for the index by the publisher. (pg 646)
Let’s look closer at each of those statements and adjust for our manuscript which at present , has no index whatsoever.
*Audience. Is the manuscript directed at a general audience or a more specific one? A good indexer perceives the level of background knowledge of the intended audience. They use that knowledge to judge the level of detail in the index, the phrasing of subject headings and subheadings, and the cross references that the reader will need to guide them to information they need. A lot of human judgment here as well as logic.
*Time and Cost . Again, from the above referenced book ,”The traditional elements of the unattainable triad in publishing are time, cost, and quality. There is no sense in doing an index of nothing less than top quality. Ideally, 2 weeks would be allowed to create an index for a 400 page scientific book.
*Length. One rule of thumb for judging the length of an index is 1 page of index (double- column, usually containing about 100 lines) to 20 to 50 pages of text. This would make the index 2 percent to 5 percent of the text pages.
Notice the * above? This information ---as I continued to reference---came from the referenced book that was published in 1994. The writer(s) did not have very many choice words to say about computers used for indexing.
“Only a human being can select indexable topics and discriminate between casual mentions of a subject and sentences or paragraphs that discuss important ideas.”
Hmmm, wonder if Bill Gates was listening to that back in 1994?
Now, its time to think about how the referenced words are going to look in the index. A professional “Indexer” will analyze the content someplace close to the following procedure. You will want to emulate their actions in order for your index to look professional.
To ensure a balanced viewpoint in the selection of indexable material, Indexers begin by reading the table of contents ( More on the TOC and a jiffy way to make one of those later), the preface, and the introduction. They then skim the entire text to get a sense of the structure and intended audience, and the author’s approach. In a second pass they read for content, identifying , highlighting indexable topics and noting the range of pages on which a subject is covered. Next, the select headings that will best represent those concepts. (New York writers guide)
It’s time for a coffee break and when we come back here, we’ll get into making the index for our manuscript according to all the “basics” we have presented here. Only difference is, we will be using the Microsoft2010 program to do all the work. It is just a matter of how we decide on what way we want to format our index.
Making the index for your manuscript with MSword2010
(Review the thought) An index lists the terms and topics in a document, along with the pages they appear on.
The best way to rapidly get this procedure is to take a manuscript you may have in your file, copy it, rename it and use that for the instructions we will give you here. We will format an index as we move along and you can see the results. Remember COPY that manuscript and work on the renamed copy so we don’t mess up a month’s work on your new novel or whatever.
FIRST you must mark the index entries: Select the text (highlight)and press ALT+SHIFT+X then when the pop up comes up (MARK INDEX ENTRY) select at the very bottom MARK * Do not select MARK ALL as this would mark every entry in your manuscript where the word you highlighted appeared. We will show you a case where you may want to reference every occurrence of the word but not here. Last. Microsoft Word will insert an XE ( Index Entry) field formatted as hidden text. The hide / show feature will automatically pop up. (To hide these marks, click on the backwards “P (paragraph Mark) on your toolbar. ) I like to keep these marks visible while I am doing the index as it indicates what area I have worked on
Once you have marked all your index entries in your manuscript thus, scroll to the place in the end of your manuscript where you want the index to appear.
Now, go up to the top of your page and on the tool bar and select insert/references/indexes and tables and select the index tab.
Click OK
Word now begins its enchanted formatting according to the set up instructions you gave it during your selection process while you were marking your manuscript with all those words you considered important to someone that wanted to find what page you talked about the ADA, etc. Word collects all this data, sorts them alphabetically , references their page numbers, finds and removes duplicate entries from the same page and displays the index in your document at the point you selected.
Do not modify, correct entries in the finished index ; if you do, your changes will be lost when you update the index. If you make changes to your document and want to add entries to your index, you can right click on the inside of the index and then click on the option “Update Field”
Lets now make an entry in our index on your practice manuscript. We’ll use this short article. Not many pages but I think you can get the message. Go up to the first paragraph in this article and see the word “document”? We will highlight this word, press ALT+SHIFT+X . In the pop up we will see the word document we marked in the area main entry. Below that we see an area for sub entry we also added in the sub entry this article and at the bottom checked our mark . When this appears in the index it will look;
document,: This one, 1
The index now shows the word we are referencing, the sub title this one and the page it first appears on,
If we had marked the word document and then marked mark all—it would give us
Document,: This one, 1,2,3,4,
Because the word appears on all these pages. Fine if you want to refer to all the topics in your document that refer to the word document but if you want to define it only once the just Mark it.
We would like to give more examples of how to format your index but, actually, we are pressing the formatting gods at Smashwords.com when we do this and the chances of this article making it through the meatagrinder become even more slim. Take the instructions we have provided here and use you copied manuscript to put in an index. Make a bunch of references, mark two columns, use bf on the page numbers---go wild with the indent and format and have a ball doing it.
A word on inserting a TOC ( Table of Contents) in your manuscript with MSword. This is a no-brainer if you are using the heading styles in MSword. As long as you use Heading 1 for main heads, Heading 2 for subheads and heading 3 for lower level heads, you will have TOC in place with the click of ..enter.
1.Create a separate blank page for your TOC.
Do this close to the top or wherever you want to place the TOC. Word will insert the TOC wherever you place the insertion pointer.
2.Click the mouse to place the insertion pointer on the new, blank page.
The TOC will be placed here.
3. Click the references tab in the tool bar.
4. In the Table of contents group, click the Table of Contents button.
The table of contents menu appears.
5. Choose an item from the menu based on what you want your TOC to look like.
Click on your selection and Voila! There is your TOC at the blank page you added.
If, for some reason the magic does not occur as promised, check to see that your document is formatted using the heading styles.
While we are on the topic of neat things to do with Word, I have to relay some short cuts and really trick (IMHO) things Word does to help writers.
Synonyms; Remember the days when we once reached on the bookshelf and hunted for that evasive word that should replace, say ,Magic? We thumbed thru our Webster’s or our voluminous Thesaurus that we had since college and thumbed the pages. Now, with Word we highlight the word, right click and from the pop up select (duh) synonyms and there it is! Enchanted ! why didn’t I think of that??? We click on enchanted and it replaces the word magic. Kewel, now, on to the next scene for our characters. I have gone through a compete manuscript when copy editing and replaced megabunches of words.
Well, we have provided almost 2,000 words of wisdom that we think will help your writing and really, we are not going to ask you to find the “write a review” button on the download page of this document. We don’t care, we do these articles, short stories just for the fun of it and to use up Smashwords free ISNB numbers. (TIC) Reverse psychology? Hey, we tried ASKING on the last three books and the review page is still blank. Lol Hope you enjoyed this and it did provide something new for you.
####