OT: Indexing

[Steve Rickaby]

At 14:57 -0400 13/6/07, Ann Zdunczyk wrote:

>I know some of you guys do indexing a lot. I have been asked to quote doing
>an index in Pagemaker (sorry). There are 1300 terms that are to be listed in
>the index. In Pagemaker, as in Framemaker, I would need to add an index
>entry for each instance of the term in a 300 page book. I have no idea how
>may entries will need to be entered.
>
>Does anyone have any idea the best way to quote something like this.

No, but this sounds like a very poor way to index. What you describe sounds like a concordance index, which is usually next to useless. A big part of the skill of indexing is to know what to index and what to leave out.

I usually reckon on about 150 pp per day for a general index for a textbook in FrameMaker, but this is a crude measure as it depends very much on the number of indexes (general, authors, specific, etc) the number of words to be included in the index, and the tools you use to support indexing. I am afraid that I have no experience of PageMaker.

You should be able to find guidance on quotation from the relevant US or UK societies. Try at:

<http://www.asindexing.org/site/index.html>

<http://www.indexers.org.uk/>

-- 
Steve