Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 20:44:39 +0000 From: BITNET list server at BINGVMB (1.8a) Subject: File: "INDEX-L LOG9610C" To: Julius Ariail ================================================================= ======== Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 09:30:19 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Marie-Lise Shams Subject: How to buy a computer. Some helpful information on how to buy a computer, get started, where to get best deals, etc. is found at: http://thunder.ocis.temple.edu/~acybriws/computer.html Marie-Lise ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^ Marie-Lise Shams ^ ^ Information Specialist ^ ^ Consortium for International Earth ^ ^ Science Information Network (CIESIN) ^ ^ 2250 Pierce Road ^ ^ University Center Michigan 48710 ^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^ Phone: +1-517-797-2790 ^ ^ Fax: +1-517-797-2622 ^ ^ E-mail: mshams@ciesin.org ^ ^ URL: http://www.ciesin.org ^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ================================================================= ======== Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 08:52:52 -0500 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group Comments: Warning -- original Sender: tag was maryann@REVISOR.LEG.STATE.MN.US From: Maryann Corbett Organization: Revisor of Statutes Subject: Re: Subentry order, scholarly (help?) On the subject of page number order versus alpha: I have a book from Yale Univ. Press that has its subentries in page number order ( title: Paul the Convert). Its subjects are not treated in chronological order, and it clearly would have benefitted from alpha order, but I'm guessing the press wanted it that way. I'd talk with the editor and try to show what the result would be like with page number order and how bad it would be for the reader, because the result would not really be time-order sequential. -- Maryann Corbett Language Specialist Office of the Revisor of Statutes Minnesota Legislature 612-297-2952 ================================================================= ======== Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 10:59:45 -0500 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Jean A. Thompson" Subject: Re: Educating Academics About Indexing via Newspaper Articles Cynthia Bertelson suggested a series of newspaper articles to educate academics about the value of hiring a professional indexer instead of indexing their own publications. Perhaps a good vehicle for such a series would be _The Chronicle of Higher Education_ which comes out weekly 48 times per year. What do Index-Lers think? Jean Thompson ================================================================= ======== Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 11:21:07 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Cynthia D. Bertelsen" Subject: Ergonomics again-desks I want to thank whomever it was that mentioned that Lowe's had these desks with a slanted shelf right under the computer monitor (I think it was you, Hazel). Anyway, I just finished entering the terms for a 378 page book and my neck doesn't hurt from swiveling back and forth to look at the text. It is right there under my nose and it was great! The desks cost about $90.00 and I figure that is about as cheap as one visit to the doctor and a lot more fun. Thanks again. ************ Cynthia D. Bertelsen INDEXER Blacksburg, VA cbertel@nrv.net http://www.vt.edu:10021/B/bertel/ndx.html ================================================================= ======== Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 11:44:21 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hazel Blumberg-McKee Subject: Re: Ergonomics again-desks In-Reply-To: <199610151529.LAA25488@polaris.net> On Tue, 15 Oct 1996, Cynthia D. Bertelsen wrote: > I want to thank whomever it was that mentioned that Lowe's had these desks > with a slanted shelf right under the computer monitor (I think it was you, > Hazel). I learned about these desks from Reina Pennington. I had never heard of such a thing. Every single computer desk I've ever seen has provision for putting pages off to the side. When I was looking in a Lowe's newspaper ad for something else, I saw the (as I now call it) Reina Pennington Desk! I was so excited! I dashed out to look at it, and then I dashed over to Service Merchandise to compare prices. I figured I'd wait to buy it until my accounts receivable became accounts actual. ;) But I knew that I had the Index from Hell to input in no time flat, so the next evening, I zipped back to Lowe's and bought the RPD. I agree with you: The desk is an absolute marvel! It's my posture that could use great, great improvement. Glad the desk is working for you. I can't imagine how I ever functioned without it. I've been killing my neck and back for YEARS. All best, Hazel Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) sign that your cat has learned your Internet password: little kitty carpal-tunnel braces near the scratching post ================================================================= ======== Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 09:19:57 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Sonsie Subject: Persuasion Techniques I just had a nice talk with a regular editor/client who told me she would probably have an index to send me...AFTER she convinced the authors not to do their own. She wanted a little ammunition, above and beyond the "professional" angle (which I always stress anyway). I told her that a professional indexer who is also an interested and educated reader can get into the book AS A READER in a way that the author cannot. He or she is steeped in (and probably drowning in) the subject matter and can no longer look at it from a reader's POV. The concepts and ideas the author would stress or see as the most important are in many cases not apparent to the reader, or not how the reader would think to look up the materials. It takes a pro, who is also a good reader and attuned to the user's POV, to turn out a great index. And the index, of course, is the main point of access to all that great information the author has collected, explicated, and discussed. My editor thought this was a great way to convince the authors to let go of their precious work (and some of their money, down the road)...and she said it worked. I got the index; I guess it did! =Sonsie= ================================================================= ======== Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 15:04:14 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Victoria Baker Subject: Re: Ergonomics again--desks + posture Hi all--I too think that the copy in a forward alignment is the least offensive to my neck and arms, as I've written about my cardboard-box lectern. Hazel wrote: >The desk is an absolute marvel! It's my posture >that could use great, great improvement. I've been making strides in improving my posture and pain levels with a series of group and private Feldenkrais lessons. Feldenkrais is a system teaching posture/movement awareness. The lessons are really subtle, no jumping around or trying to achieve extreme contortions. It's about opening up energy paths to allow different habitual posture/movement. The group lessons are inexpensive. I note that a few years ago an Australian friend of mine went to one of their top orthopedic surgeons in search of the "best" care for her repetitive-stress problems. He told her Western medicine doesn't really know much about fixing these problems, and that the best cure he knew of was T'ai Chi, the Chinese meditation/exercise/martial art system, because of its focus on diagonal movement. Turns out the rectangular movements associated with RSI problems are the big problem, plus peoples' energies being cut off from their limbs. Feldenkrais also seems to generate non-rectangular movements. It's working for me. I also remember someone in this discussion recommending the Alexander Technique, from which Feldenkrais grew, in part (as I understand), but they are distinct systems. A difference is that Feldenkrais draws one into the core body and Alexander works with lightening the body. Whichever aspect someone needs might help determine which might be a better approach. Cheers--Victoria Baker ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 08:39:43 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: WordenDex@AOL.COM Subject: Sublevel justification When indexing a high school text, are two sublevels more than you think students can understand? Main entry Sub1a sub2a sub2a turnover sub2b-g Sub1b There might be a column-width excuse for not going to two sublevels. If each column of a three column index is set at 30 characters, "wasting" spaces on sub2 indentation and forced turnovers might be a typographical reason to limit to one sublevel. Is lack of understanding another reason? What else might be? I'm trying to justify two sublevels in order to group more like things together, a help for whatever age group, but I'd be interested in learning why it might not be such a good idea. Diane Worden, Kalamazoo, Mich. ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 09:35:21 -0600 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Carol Roberts Subject: Re: Author indexes are free >"We nearly always talk the authors into doing their own indexing on the >theory that (a) they know more about the subject matter than anyone else >and (b) it's free." > >It's easy for the publishers to convince themselves that (a) is true, if they >have (b) as an inducement. > >Am I just contacting the wrong publishers? You could certainly try other publishers, but I wouldn't necessarily take that response lying down. After all, there are good reasons to think that author-written indexes, even if they are free in a very literal sense, are often very poorly done. Are they really free, or is there a hidden cost? It seems analogous to plumbing. You could hire a professional, or you could do the job yourself. If you do the job yourself, it may look like it's free, but (alas) there are sometimes delayed costs (leaks). Perhaps you could come back with a line like, "Are you really satisfied with the quality you've seen in indexes written by your authors?" If the publisher is willing to hear you out, you can go on about what you can offer that most authors can't. If the publisher says, "We're not interested in quality," then I'd say, "Thank you for your time" and hang up. Or, if you want to be a bit nasty (not really a good idea in our business--better to leave bridges unburned), you could say, "I'll have to keep that in mind next time I consider buying one of your books." Good luck, Don. Cheers, Carol Roberts, indexer and copy editor | Life is good. Carol.Roberts@mixcom.com | Milwaukee, WI | ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 10:59:07 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: JanCW@AOL.COM Subject: Liability insurance and EIN Hi all, Lately I seem to be getting lots of unusual conditions coming with potential new clients. One has asked that I carry liability insurance, which is a first. Does anyone else carry liability insurance for their indexing business? I would love to be able to state to the client that "XX% of indexers do not carry such insurance," when I explain that I do not wish to pay for it for one project, but would love to hear from people pro and con. A second client has asked for me to get an EIN (employer identification number) even though I have been doing business as a sole proprietor under my SSN for 10 years now. They claim they will not do business unless you have one, even though the Federal Government does not require it. Has anyone else gotten an EIN? I've got the forms, but again, I would love to hear pros and cons on that. Jan (wishing I could just stick to the indexing end of business this morning) Wright ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 11:33:43 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Unanalyzed locators after main entries with subs Hi folks, Here's an indexing practice that I've often encountered, but never understood the reasoning behind it. And, BTW, I'm not being critical of the practice by asking this question, just expressing curiosity. Why do some indexers create main headings followed by unanalyzed locators, yet analyze other references of the subject in a list of subentries for the same heading? In other words, why analyze some but not all references to a given subject? Do the unanalyzed locators represent: a) passages where the term is merely defined; b) passages where the subject is discussed very broadly that the unanalyzed locators are used instead of a subentry saying "described"; c) passages containing merely passing references to the subject. d) early instances of the term where the indexer didn't create subentries, then said later "Ooops, I better start analyzing this or I'll end up with too many unanalyzed locators" but didn't go back and analyze the others. ;-D Comments? Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 11:33:44 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks OK folks, here's another question. I've found that textbooks often contain vocabulary words that, IMHO, should be indexed, however they are often adjectives, adverbs, or verbs. In other words, they aren't nouns. I've jumped through hoops trying to recast them as nouns. For example, I've converted verbs to their gerund (noun) form, I've tacked nouns onto the end of adjectives when doing so doesn't distort or limit the scope of the term (not always possible), etc. However, not all vocabulary words are amenable to this type of treatment. This issue arises nearly every time I index a textbook. How do the rest of you handle this problem? Do you bend the rule about using only nouns as main headings and index the vocabulary words exactly as they appear in the text or what? (I have seen them indexed as they appear in the text, but non-noun forms do look strange to me in an index.) Thanks for any input. Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 12:04:35 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hazel Blumberg-McKee Subject: Re: Liability insurance and EIN In-Reply-To: <199610161505.LAA28768@polaris.net> On Wed, 16 Oct 1996 JanCW@AOL.COM wrote: > Lately I seem to be getting lots of unusual conditions coming with potential > new clients. You certainly are! ;-)) > One has asked that I carry liability insurance, which is a first. Does anyone > else carry liability insurance for their indexing business? FWIW, I don't carry liability insurance, and I never have. > A second client has asked for me to get an EIN (employer identification > number) even though I have been doing business as a sole proprietor under my > SSN for 10 years now. They claim they will not do business unless you have > one, even though the Federal Government does not require it. Has anyone else > gotten an EIN? I don't have an EIN, either. I *did* have to get a taxpayer ID number from the Florida Department of Revenue when I started to make jewelry--none of which I've even attempted to sell yet! So, every month, I send in a form covered with zeros. Florida doesn't require a taxpayer ID number when you're dealing with something like services. And they deem indexes to be a service--at least for the moment. ;-) Is there a possibility of you talking with the Accounts Payable people at these two publishing houses and finding out why liability insurance and an EIN are needed? Perhaps if you knew the rationale, you could explain why you didn't need these things--or perhaps it'd turn out to be to your advantage to have them. But the liability insurance one is a real puzzler. I figure the EIN is something that the publisher is used to seeing with large vendors. Curiouser and curiouser. Hazel Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) sign that your cat has learned your Internet password: little kitty carpal-tunnel braces near the scratching post ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 12:11:46 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hazel Blumberg-McKee Subject: Re: Unanalyzed locators after main entries with subs In-Reply-To: <199610161553.LAA11477@polaris.net> On Wed, 16 Oct 1996 Wildefire@AOL.COM wrote: > Why do some indexers create > main headings followed by unanalyzed locators, yet analyze other references > of the subject in a list of subentries for the same heading? In other words, > why analyze some but not all references to a given subject? That's a question I have, too. I've seen this done in a lot of indexes, and I'm never sure if these are general references, passing references, or the most important references. But because I *do* see these so frequently in indexes, I figure that they must mean something. I just don't know what. ;-} Because I don't know what these references represent, and I'm not sure if readers do, either, I avoid them in my indexing. When I correct my students' USDA assignments, I often see the sort of entry Lynn mentions. When I return the corrected assignment, I query my students: "Could you include these page numbers in one of your subheadings?" "What do these page numbers represent to you? Are they passing references, general references, important references, definitions, or something else?" Anyway, I'd be really interested in hearing how these locators are perceived. Please don't take this as a criticism. It isn't. It's just a sign of my own confusion. ;-] Hazel Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) sign that your cat has learned your Internet password: little kitty carpal-tunnel braces near the scratching post ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 11:19:24 -0500 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group Comments: Warning -- original Sender: tag was maryann@REVISOR.LEG.STATE.MN.US From: Maryann Corbett Organization: Revisor of Statutes Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks Lynn Moncrief wrote: > > OK folks, here's another question. I've found that textbooks often contain > vocabulary words that, IMHO, should be indexed, however they are often > adjectives, adverbs, or verbs. In other words, they aren't nouns. (little snip) > How do the rest of you handle this problem? Do you bend the rule about using > only nouns as main headings and index the vocabulary words exactly as they > appear in the text or what? (snip again) Non-nouns that need indexing come up often in legal books, too. The standard method of dealing with them is one that the indexing theorists frown on: They go in a second index, usually called a words and phrases index, or under their own main heading (words and phrases, or definitions). Everybody acknowledges that this is not the greatest. The first method seems to have fewer problems than the second, as people seem able to find a second index faster than they can find a special and too-broad main heading. Another treatment is to put words that are being considered _as words_ in italics, while most headings are in plain text. "Vocabulary words" might be treated as that sort of thing. I'm eager to read other solutions. -- Maryann Corbett Language Specialist Office of the Revisor of Statutes Minnesota Legislature 612-297-2952 ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 12:22:09 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Richard T. Evans" Subject: Unanalyzed locators after main entries with subs When I do it, I usually follow your rules "A" and "B", using unanalyzed locaters (never more than one or two) to represent introductory information or a definition. However, I just bought a book yesterday where the indexer seemed to follow your rule "D". I was looking for a defnition of an ActiveX term. I found the term in the index but it had several unanalyzed locaters followed by twenty or so subentries. None of the unanalyzed locaters provided the answer I was looking for nor were there any subentries for "definition" or "description." My reason for doing it is that computer books often generate primary entries with dozens or even hundreds of subentries. For instance, a primary of "commands" followed by 200 subentries, one for each command. In such a long list, a subentry for "definition" or "description" can get buried. I also have clients who prohibit the use of "description" as a subentry unless the text actually uses the word "description." Dick Evans > >Here's an indexing practice that I've often encountered, but never understood >the reasoning behind it. And, BTW, I'm not being critical of the practice by >asking this question, just expressing curiosity. Why do some indexers create >main headings followed by unanalyzed locators, yet analyze other references >of the subject in a list of subentries for the same heading? In other words, >why analyze some but not all references to a given subject? Do the unanalyzed >locators represent: > >a) passages where the term is merely defined; >b) passages where the subject is discussed very broadly that the unanalyzed > locators are used instead of a subentry saying "described"; >c) passages containing merely passing references to the subject. >d) early instances of the term where the indexer didn't create subentries, >then > said later "Ooops, I better start analyzing this or I'll end up with too >many > unanalyzed locators" but didn't go back and analyze the others. ;-D > >Comments? > >Lynn Moncrief >TECHindex & Docs >Technical and Scientific Indexing > ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 12:47:51 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: LLFEdServ@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Liability insurance and EIN I have neither liability insurance nor an EIN number. I have had 2 publishers that started asking me for those types of things. It was the accounting department that wanted to complicate matters. Both of them were technical publishers attached to producers of very techie-type stuff (one place produced satellites). The editor was able to intervene and work with me to explain to accounting why I didn't need these things. I don't have anyone else working in my office, etc. Why should I have liability insurance. Their concern is that someone will come back and sue them. Your response can be that you are identified as an independent contractor in the contract and receive no benefits, regular salary, etc. Just payment for the job contracted out. The EIN they should be able to work around also. They should be able to use your ssn. Talk to your editor or editorial contact and see if he/she can work with you on this. Good luck, Leslie ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 12:50:56 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: LLFEdServ@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks Lynn, I started out doing only textbooks, and I'm afraid I did and do the same thing you are already doing. I create nouns, tack on nouns, etc. I am trying to think if I ever used just an adjective or adverb, and I cannot think of any instances. Sorry to be lacking suggestions. Leslie Leslie Leland Frank Editorial Services ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 12:50:24 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Richard T. Evans" Subject: Re: Liability insurance and EIN At 10:59 AM 10/16/96 -0400, you wrote: >Hi all, > >Lately I seem to be getting lots of unusual conditions coming with potential >new clients. > >One has asked that I carry liability insurance, which is a first. Does anyone >else carry liability insurance for their indexing business? I would love to >be able to state to the client that "XX% of indexers do not carry such >insurance," when I explain that I do not wish to pay for it for one project, >but would love to hear from people pro and con. What sort of liability might you incur? Is the material so sensitive that a mistake in the index might cause damage or injury to the reader? I have worked with a software developer who had to have an "errors and omissions" agreement with his client because he was writing software for clinical trials data analysis but I have never considered it as an indexer. Frankly, it the material were that sensitive I wouldn't want to work on it without a stiff extra fee and probably not even then. > >A second client has asked for me to get an EIN (employer identification >number) even though I have been doing business as a sole proprietor under my >SSN for 10 years now. They claim they will not do business unless you have >one, even though the Federal Government does not require it. Has anyone else >gotten an EIN? I've got the forms, but again, I would love to hear pros and >cons on that. I recently incorporated but before that used SSN and EIN interchangeably. Dick Evans ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 13:40:25 -0400 Reply-To: meisheid@sageline.com Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "William G. Meisheid" Organization: Sageline Publishing Subject: Re: Liability insurance and EIN Jan, Re: Liability insurance What liability do they want covered? Most people ask about Workman's Comp before they suggest liability, especially for offsite work. Liability is for any damages you produce to the client or their customers so I wonder if they are concerned about someone suing them for entries in their index? Re: EIN number Some corporations will not accept SSN since it makes it easier for the IRS to claim you are an employee rather than a contractor. EIN helps them nad you. One note - as a sole proprieter you only get one EIN which is linked to your SSN no matter how many "businesses" and schedule Cs you file. Only corporations get different EIN numbers. So that number will be your number from now on. Thanks for the help you gave me leading up to the conference in Dallas. My class went very well and I am iterating it as we type. I will be forwarding something to you shortly. I just want everyone to know how kind and helpful you are... -- William Meisheid "Thoughts still and always in progress" Sageline Publishing WinHelp Indexing and Certified RoboHELP Training wgm@sageline.com CompuServe: 70713,2225 Sageline Voice 410.465.1548 Fax: 410.465.1812/410.744.2456 www.sageline.com ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 11:19:07 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Elinor Lindheimer Subject: Re: Liability insurance and EIN I don't have business liability insurance, but I have heard of an indexer who does--I just can't remember who. My husband and I got an EIN for the indexing business and we do the taxes, etc. as a partnership. This is a lot of paperwork at tax time (which is alwaays last minute--i.e. we just finished yesterday), but he says it's better in the long run. He's the business manager, and I'm the indexer, I guess! But I do think that talking to the accounting department will help you sort out this problem. It may have to do with fear of having you labeled an employee rather than an independent contractor. Microsoft just lost a major case in that regard. If you have your own liability insurance and your own EIN, which makes you look more like a business, the client will feel safer. I would talk to a tax person about tax implications. An enrolled agent such as Lillian Lea, who has written columns for KEYWORDS, would be able to tell you about that. Good luck! Elinor ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 11:19:03 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Elinor Lindheimer Subject: Re: Unanalyzed locators after main entries with subs Lynn is challenging us today! She wrote: >Here's an indexing practice that I've often encountered, but never understood >the reasoning behind it. And, BTW, I'm not being critical of the practice by >asking this question, just expressing curiosity. Why do some indexers create >main headings followed by unanalyzed locators, yet analyze other references >of the subject in a list of subentries for the same heading? In other words, >why analyze some but not all references to a given subject? Do the unanalyzed >locators represent: > >a) passages where the term is merely defined; >b) passages where the subject is discussed very broadly that the unanalyzed > locators are used instead of a subentry saying "described"; >c) passages containing merely passing references to the subject. >d) early instances of the term where the indexer didn't create subentries, >then > said later "Ooops, I better start analyzing this or I'll end up with too >many unanalyzed locators" but didn't go back and analyze the others. When I index, I tend to overanalyze from the first, but when there is a general discussion about something over several pages (like the "about" entries in the JOY OF COOKING index), I often make that just the page locators after the heading. If there are also passing references that have to be there but don't warrant subentries, I often put the general discussion in boldface type, to set it off and to send the reader there first. I guess this is "b" in Lynn's list, or a combination of "b" and "c." If there is room in the index, I prefer to make "defined" a separate subentry. If not, yes, I'd go with "a" as well. Elinor ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 11:19:09 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Elinor Lindheimer Subject: Re: Unanalyzed locators after main entries with subs I see a couple of cans of worms opening up.... Richard T. Evans wrote: >...I usually follow your rules "A" and "B", using unanalyzed >locaters (never more than one or two) to represent introductory information >or a definition. However, I just bought a book yesterday where the indexer >seemed to follow your rule "D". I was looking for a defnition of an ActiveX >term. I found the term in the index but it had several unanalyzed locaters >followed by twenty or so subentries. None of the unanalyzed locaters >provided the answer I was looking for nor were there any subentries for >"definition" or "description." If a term is defined, it should have an entry "defined" or have a page locator that directs reader to the definition. If there isn't enough space, typesetting can be used to indicate definitions (i.e., "Page numbers in italics refer to the location of definitions" or some such explanatory note). >My reason for doing it is that computer books often generate primary entries >with dozens or even hundreds of subentries. For instance, a primary of >"commands" followed by 200 subentries, one for each command. In such a long >list, a subentry for "definition" or "description" can get buried. I have never understood why computer manuals need to have each command as a subentry under "commands." The best manuals have lists of commands, so one could have a "listed" subentry for each type of command rather than for each command. Or the "commands" entry could just be about using or manipulating commands. A "See also" reference then sends the reader to the specific commands. Finally, here's another example of the use of a noun--"description" or "definition" rather than the simpler "described" or "defined." I've also seen "description of" or "definition of" -- even longer entries. I much prefer the shorter word when possible. Maybe this preference comes from spending so much time shortening lines and making indexes fit (because of my tendency to overanalayze!). Elinor ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 11:28:47 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Elinor Lindheimer Subject: Re: Sublevel justification WordenDex@AOL.COM wrote: >When indexing a high school text, are two sublevels more than you think >students can understand? > Main entry > Sub1a > sub2a > sub2a turnover > sub2b-g > Sub1b I think the only justification for sub-subheaadings is extremely dense material, such as in legal or medical texts. In a high-school textbook, you can find other ways to organize the index, especially if the columns aren't very wide. As you surmised, turnovers of sub-subheadings can look extremely awkward. But this is a case where you'd do well to consult with the editor. The publisher may have rules about numbers of subentries. Perhaps you can see samples of previous indexes? Good luck! Elinor Lindheimer elinorl@mcn.org ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 11:18:58 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Elinor Lindheimer Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks Lynn wrote: >I've found that textbooks often contain vocabulary words that, IMHO, should be indexed, however they are often adjectives, adverbs, or verbs. In other words, they aren't nouns...How do the rest of you handle this problem? Do you bend the rule about using only nouns as main headings and index the vocabulary words exactly as they appear in the text or what? It would help to see a couple of examples, but in general I believe very strongly in going for the logical answer. If there is no noun that works, so what? Certainly I would want to look up "deleting" in a computer manual--not "deletion" or--heaven help us--"erasure." Rules can go only so far. That's my 2 cents! Elinor ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 14:39:39 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hazel Blumberg-McKee Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks In-Reply-To: <199610161623.MAA20216@polaris.net> I've come across glossary terms in textbooks and terms that are defined in all sorts of books. I usually leave them in the form in which I found them in the text. I remember indexing a textbook in which the publisher stressed that all glossary terms were to be indexed. After making myself half crazy trying to "nounize" the terms, I gave up and went back to inputting them exactly as they were. I realize I'm violating the noun rule here, but I rationalize ;} by saying, "Hey, that's the term the *author* wanted the reader to know, after all!" Just my $.02. Hazel Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) sign that your cat has learned your Internet password: little kitty carpal-tunnel braces near the scratching post ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 15:11:11 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Rica Night Subject: Re: Author indexes are free Don has been struggling with publishers who respond to his cold calls with the following: >"We nearly always talk the authors into doing their own indexing on the >theory that (a) they know more about the subject matter than anyone else >and (b) it's free." I'm a bit puzzled by this. In Canada--at least among the trade, scholarly, and textbook publishers for whom I've worked--the author pays for the index one way or another. Either the author creates the index (thereby paying in time) or a professional is hired (sometimes directly by the author, other times using the publisher as intermediary) to create it. In the latter case, the money to pay the professional's fee is deducted from the author's royalties. First-time authors sometimes try to create their own. But after finding out how long the process takes and how fiddly it is, or what a lousy job the built-in indexing module on their word processor does, on subsequent books they often ask the publisher for a referral to a qualified pro. Sometimes they even start the process themselves, and then give up and ask for help a couple of weeks later. It's a rare author who wants to bother learning enough about indexing (not to mention about the software) to do a decent job. And even for those authors who are willing to do so, it's rarely the best use of their time when they could be teaching, writing another book, promoting this book, etc. So, Don, you might try the "soft sell" when you hit this particular obstacle. After pointing out some of the above, ask the in-house editor whether you might send along some information anyway, saying something like this: "You might find it useful to have on file just in case one of your authors hasn't got the time or the inclination or both to create a high-quality index. That way you'll be able to refer that author to me, and I'll negotiate fees directly with him or her." In more than 15 years as an editor and indexer, I've seen it happen over and over again that a client who backs away from using my services (or any other professional's services) for price reasons often returns to the fold some time later for quality reasons. For example, in mid-1995, a trade publisher who'd been a fairly steady repeat customer suddenly stopped calling, after rejecting one of my quotes as too high. Let's call the last project I did for them Book X, and the next one (the one they wound up assigning to a "cheaper" indexer) Book Y. Since I don't like to burn my bridges, I took their decision like the pro I claim to be: I didn't fuss at them (partly because I was aware that, because it was an indexing job, the about-face could have been due to the author's misguided frugality). Nor did I bug them about further work. I just continued serving the numerous clients (almost all of whom have come to me via referral) who appreciate me and pay my rates cheerfully. Oh, and when I came across a laudatory review of one of the books I'd worked on for them, I sent along a copy--even though the reviewer neglected to mention the book's superb index . Flash forward to August 1996, and guess who calls right in the middle of the summer rush? Said the chastened client, who was hoping I'd find the time to do a rush job on Book Z, a hefty biography, on short notice, "We know you cost a little more than some other indexers, but we really like the work you do, so we've talked the author into using you." As it happens, I know the freelancer who copyedited all three books. She later told me that for what the publishers had had to pay her to rescue Index Y, which hadn't come close to their standards, they could easily have paid the difference between my fees and those of the, er, off-brand indexer several times over--and the copyeditor had told the publisher so, in no uncertain terms. Clearly they listened. (Yes, I thanked my pal.) So you just never know when someone who didn't seem to want to work with you will show up all but begging for the privilege. I try to be as gracious as possible when this happens--no "Nyah, nyah, toldja so!" (well, not to their *faces*, anyway ). It's enough to feel vindicated, and to be able to tell my colleagues about it over a virtual coffee. As a business mentor of mine used to insist, "It's not *if* you get even, it's when." What goes around comes around, and all that. Don, I echo the good-luck-and-hang-in-there messages you've received from other denizens of this list. Do good work (volunteer at first if necessary), be a mensch, don't give up, and your business can hardly help but grow and prosper. It'll just take time. Regards, Rica Night ================================ (Ms.) Rica Night rnight@inforamp.net Freelance Copyeditor, Proofreader, Indexer, trainer Toronto, Canada 416-463-EDIT "My own boss: when I talk, *I* listen!" ================================ ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 16:06:47 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Richard T. Evans" Subject: Re: Unanalyzed locators after main entries with subs At 11:19 AM 10/16/96 -0700, you wrote: >I see a couple of cans of worms opening up.... >I have never understood why computer manuals need to have each command as a >subentry under "commands." The best manuals have lists of commands, so one >could have a "listed" subentry for each type of command rather than for each >command. Or the "commands" entry could just be about using or manipulating >commands. A "See also" reference then sends the reader to the specific >commands. I'm not sure what you mean by this. I have had clients request that individual commands not be listed under a primary. Instead, they requested a single cross ref that said "See also specific command names." That doesn't help much when the reader knows he wants a command but doesn't remember the specific name. Also, not all books consolidate all commands in a single list and even those that do don't restrict discussion of each to its respective place in the list. Thus one might find the following: commands FIND case sensitivity, 186 forming groups, 188 syntax, 222 wildcards, 190 ..where the list of commands appears on page 215-230. This generates the one "syntax" entry, but the others are generated by various other discussions in the book. On the other hand, it does bother me that long lists of secondary entries tend to obscure topics other than the command names. I recently saw a novel way of dealing with this. The index had a primary for "commands" and secondaries for generic topics related to commands. It also had a primary for "commands (listed by name)" under which the individual commands were listed. Dick Evans ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 16:07:23 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: ROBJRICH@AOL.COM Subject: Internet Virus Warning All - - Just received this message from a colleague who is not given to frivolous alarms. I don't know anything about it (i.e., if it is a hoax or a real threat), but thought that it might be well to post the warning. Can anyone clarify this? Bob Richardson . *************************************************** Dear Bob, Herewith message copied from the email list I do still belong to: Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 20:44:39 +0000 From: BITNET list server at BINGVMB (1.8a) Subject: File: "INDEX-L LOG9610C" To: Julius Ariail This is a copy of a warning just received from Jim Clegg (jsclegg@ucdavis.edu): Subject: new virus warning There is a new virus on the internet, there is no CLEANSING available for this as yet, please read below and be careful. This is being sent to a general audience, to caution with file sharing.= > DO NOT DOWNLOADANY FILE NAMED PKZIP300 REGARDLESS OF EXENSION. >A NEW Trojan Horse Virus has emerged on the Internet with the name > PKZIP300.ZIP, so named as to give the impression that this file >is a new version of the PKZIP software used to "zip" compressed files >DO NOT DOWNLOAD THIS FILE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!! If you install >or expand the file, > the virus WILL wipe your hard disk clean and affect > modems at 14.4 and higher. This is an extremely destructive virus > > there is NOT yet a way of cleaning this one up. >> PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO ANYONE YOU KNOW. > . ***************************************************************** ************ ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 16:23:44 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hazel Blumberg-McKee Subject: Re: Author indexes are free In-Reply-To: <199610161919.PAA16320@polaris.net> What an excellent posting of Rica Night's! I have to admit that I'm waiting for the what-goes-around-comes-around phenomenon to take place with an old, old client. Maybe it'll happen. I used to index LOTS of books for this particular press. The folks there were my main clients. I knew someone else who also did lots of indexing work for the press. Suddenly, neither of us were receiving any work from our biggest client. Nary a word. The other indexer learned that the client had found a couple of impoverished students who lived in the same town as the one the press was in. These students were receiving *all* the press's indexing work simply because they were charging astonishingly low rates. I know that neither the other indexer nor I were overcharging the press. I know we *loved* the books we worked on and that the press was very satisfied with our work. However, bucks seemed more important. I haven't heard anything from the press in a long time, and I don't think the other indexer has, either. Well, maybe the impoverished students are doing a good job. Who can know. Hazel Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) sign that your cat has learned your Internet password: little kitty carpal-tunnel braces near the scratching post ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 16:48:02 +0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Laurie D. T. Mann" Subject: Re: Internet Virus Warning In-Reply-To: <199610162044.QAA04669@ivory.lm.com> On Wed, 16 Oct 1996 ROBJRICH@AOL.COM wrote: > Just received this message from a colleague who is not given to frivolous > alarms. I don't know anything about it (i.e., if it is a hoax or a real > threat), but thought that it might be well to post the warning. Can anyone > clarify this? This is almost as old as the "good times" virus... ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 17:00:51 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Daveream@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Liability insurance and EIN I don't carry "programming" liability insurance, but I do supply limited warranties with the programs. Basically this means I fix/replace a non-functioning program but I'm not going to pay for keying of lost data as an example if the program somehow would mess it up irretrievably. This would be analogous to a badly (who judges this!) index causing a book to be unsellable. A simpler example might be that the index was created from the first page proofs rather than the second (correct) page proofs through an indexer's oversight and then the book was printed. You don't want to have to pay to reprint the book. A limited warranty helps here. Basically it says I'm responsible for my work, I stand behind it, but you have to check it out to because once you use it I'm not responsible for any other costs you incur. (very non-legalese). One-time while working for another company years ago, another programmer typeset a membership directory from a computer file and his program left out every fifth name due to some bug. The directory was printed and mailed before the problem was uncovered. Shortly after the company sued the company I worked for we started including limited warranties. I use an EIN because I'm incorporated, but even as a sole proprietorship it can be helpful as a tax id. It may cost a small amount if anything, but I know of no downside to having one. Dave ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 16:58:54 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hazel Blumberg-McKee Subject: Ergonomics: Touchpad I can't remember who wrote to the list and mentioned that touchpads act up when it's humid out. I'd like to thank the person who told us that! It's gotten sticky here again, after some nonhumid days, and despite all my tinkering with the touchpad's sensitivity, I frequently couldn't get the cursor to move. So, if you live in an extremely humid area of the world, as I do, you might want to consider a trackball, if you're not happy with your mouse. Hazel Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) sign that your cat has learned your Internet password: little kitty carpal-tunnel braces near the scratching post ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 17:10:42 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Daveream@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Liability insurance and EIN I'll add one more thing about EINs. It is required of businesses now to file 1099s for individuals when they are paid over a certain sum ($600?). I often receive W-9 forms to specify my EIN or SSN. I include my EIN on my stationery now to try and preempt this inquires. Maybe the requests for EINs to indexers is the A/P folks try to classify you one way or the other for reporting purposes. Dave ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 17:36:54 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Rica Night Subject: Re: Unanalyzed locators after main entries with subs Lynn wrote: >>Here's an indexing practice that I've often encountered, but never understood >>the reasoning behind it. And, BTW, I'm not being critical of the practice by >>asking this question, just expressing curiosity. Why do some indexers create >>main headings followed by unanalyzed locators, yet analyze other references >>of the subject in a list of subentries for the same heading? In other words, >>why analyze some but not all references to a given subject? Do the unanalyzed >>locators represent: >> >>a) passages where the term is merely defined; >>b) passages where the subject is discussed very broadly that the unanalyzed >> locators are used instead of a subentry saying "described"; >>c) passages containing merely passing references to the subject. >>d) early instances of the term where the indexer didn't create subentries, >>then >> said later "Ooops, I better start analyzing this or I'll end up with too >>many unanalyzed locators" but didn't go back and analyze the others. And Elinor (among others) responded: >When I index, I tend to overanalyze from the first, but when there is a >general discussion about something over several pages (like the "about" >entries in the JOY OF COOKING index), I often make that just the page >locators after the heading. If there are also passing references that have >to be there but don't warrant subentries, I often put the general discussion >in boldface type, to set it off and to send the reader there first. I guess >this is "b" in Lynn's list, or a combination of "b" and "c." If there is >room in the index, I prefer to make "defined" a separate subentry. If not, >yes, I'd go with "a" as well. As far as I can tell, my approach is very similar to Elinor's. Nor do I find this "practice" unusual or unprofessional. The index to CMS14 itself contains entries like those described by Lynn (see, for example, the entry for "double spacing"--which is on p. 886 of my copy). See also, in CMS14's indexing chapter (which, if I recall correctly, was prepared in consultation with Nancy Mulvany), sections 17.53 and 17.56, which contain a sample entry for "house renovation" that's, er, built this way. Further examples appear in sections 17.57 (for "education, higher") and 17.141 (for "agriculture"). Nancy's own _Indexing Books_ (a superb resource I'd have killed to have access to when I was starting out 15 years ago) includes a nifty section on "Reducing the Length of an Index" that, among other suggestions, offers the following index-trimming tactic: "If the index is a two-level index (main headings and subentries), the editor can scan the index looking for subentries that are followed by only one page number. These subentries can be eliminated and their reference locators pulled up to the main heading that they modify." Assuming that the editor leaves some other subentries--the ones followed by more than one locator--alone, it seems to me that this approach will generate an entry that looks like the ones Lynn's puzzled by. All of which is to say, I guess, that I don't find the practice odd at all. I see it all the time, and I use it myself--generally when I'm being asked to shoehorn an index into an inadequate space (which actually happens more often than not, in my experience). Standard disclaimers apply to my comments about Nancy's book. I have no stake, financial or otherwise, in its success. I'm merely a fan. --Rica Night ================================ (Ms.) Rica Night rnight@inforamp.net Freelance Copyeditor, Proofreader, Indexer, trainer Toronto, Canada 416-463-EDIT "My own boss: when I talk, *I* listen!" ================================ ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 16:16:13 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Sonsie Subject: Re: Liability insurance and EIN At 10:59 AM 10/16/96 -0400, JanCW@AOL.COM wrote: >One has asked that I carry liability insurance, which is a first. Does anyone >else carry liability insurance for their indexing business? I would love to >be able to state to the client that "XX% of indexers do not carry such >insurance," when I explain that I do not wish to pay for it for one project, >but would love to hear from people pro and con. I considered having liability insurance (also called "errors and omissions" insurance) some years ago, and decided it was simply not necessary and not economically feasible. Given the type of work we do, it would be virtually impossible for us to have any true liability in terms of having destroyed profits or otherwised ruined a project because of an error or omission we made. We're not building bridges; we're not writing the books and including serious factual errors, and so forth. If a client is worried about physical liability (loss of proofs, or loss of your computer system due to a fire or something), that's easily covered with an umbrella policy rider on your home insurance (or home office coverage). And I gather most of us have already taken some pretty serious steps to protect our work product (spare computers, complex backup systems, UPS, and so on). I've never had a client ask this, and if he or she refused to work with me because I didn't have extra liability insurance, I would happily direct that person elsewhere. >A second client has asked for me to get an EIN (employer identification >number) even though I have been doing business as a sole proprietor under my >SSN for 10 years now. They claim they will not do business unless you have >one, even though the Federal Government does not require it. Has anyone else >gotten an EIN? No, haven't been there or done that, either! I don't think this is necessary in any real-world sense, and again, if a client refused to work with me because of it, I'd say "so sorry" and move on. I've worked with companies huge to tiny and never had this request, so I wouldn't sweat it if I were you. =Sonsie= ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 16:16:17 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Sonsie Subject: Re: Internet Virus Warning At 04:07 PM 10/16/96 -0400, ROBJRICH@AOL.COM wrote: >All - - > >Just received this message from a colleague who is not given to frivolous >alarms. I don't know anything about it (i.e., if it is a hoax or a real >threat), but thought that it might be well to post the warning. Can anyone >clarify this? Yes, this one is real. Do NOT download any "new" version of PKZIP that purports to be version 3. The latest one is version 2.5 or thereabouts. I've had confirmation of this virus for at least a year now, so I believe it's real. =Sonsie= ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 16:16:16 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Sonsie Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks At 11:33 AM 10/16/96 -0400, Wildefire@AOL.COM wrote: >OK folks, here's another question. I've found that textbooks often contain >vocabulary words that, IMHO, should be indexed, however they are often >adjectives, adverbs, or verbs. In other words, they aren't nouns. I run into this all the time, and I really hate it. IMO it's frequently the fault of the author (or editor), who should be doing that recasting and not leave it up to the indexer. If possible, I try to make a reasonable-sounding noun out of the term. If it simply is not possible, I'll go with the term as written. Ugh. No easy answer, is there? =Sonsie= ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 20:12:07 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Unanalyzed locators after main entries with subs In a message dated 96-10-16 12:44:45 EDT, you write: > When I do it, I usually follow your rules "A" and "B", using unanalyzed > locaters (never more than one or two) to represent introductory information > or a definition. However, I just bought a book yesterday where the indexer > seemed to follow your rule "D". I was looking for a defnition of an ActiveX > term. I found the term in the index but it had several unanalyzed locaters > followed by twenty or so subentries. None of the unanalyzed locaters > provided the answer I was looking for nor were there any subentries for > "definition" or "description." Hi Dick, And I threw "D" in there with tongue slightly in cheek. ;-D BTW, if you haven't yet found a definition for the ActiveX term let me know. I indexed a whole book on ActiveX last week and may be able to find a definition for you. (I say this, confident that it wasn't my index that gave you so much frustration. ;-D) > > My reason for doing it is that computer books often generate primary entries > with dozens or even hundreds of subentries. For instance, a primary of > "commands" followed by 200 subentries, one for each command. In such a long > list, a subentry for "definition" or "description" can get buried. Here's how I get around this problem. (You probably do a variation on this in addition to listing all of your commands under "commands".) First I create a general cross-ref from "commands" to "See also specific commands (or functions, statements, etc.)", reserving that entry for topics that apply to commands in general. To help those readers who may not know which command they're looking for, I try to give other guideposts in the index. The technique varies somewhat, depending on whether the book is an end-user software manual or if it's a programming text (where the problem is often worse). In programming texts, I create main entries for major categories of commands, such as functions, statements, etc. (I do the same for other language components, such as constants, variables, etc.) In most texts, types of functions, for example, are grouped together, such as arithmetic, date/time, file I/O, string, etc. These groupings become subentries under "functions". Usually the page ranges for each of these subentries is small enough that the reader can easily find the specific function desired according to its type. When space permits and when the number of locators for each subsub is small, I'll list the individual functions as subsubs. If not, I've, at least, directed them to a section of the book where the functions are grouped closely together or listed in a table and I can generate a general cross to the specific functions if necessary without losing sleep over leaving them totally unable to find the name of the function they need. Of course, there are main entries for each function and I also create main entries for the subentries under "functions" where it is easier to break out the individual functions; e.g.: functions arithmetic, 327-330 string, 340-351 syntax, 324 types of, 325-6 and... string functions listed, 340t Len(), ...page numbers... MidStr(), ...page numbers... then... Len() function, blah-de-blah statement and, 212 described, 349 purpose, 326t Statements, for example, can be grouped as looping statements (or constructs), SQL statements, etc. in this same vein. In other words, I save the specificity for the more finely-grained main headings, especially in programming texts. End-user software manuals (e.g., word processors, etc.) don't usually pose quite as large a problem in terms of commands, but even there I use similar devices to get readers to a place in the index where the commands can be easily listed without worrying about the subentry list becoming so long that the reader becomes "lost" in the index. (Toolbar buttons, dialog boxes, menus, and other GUI components are usually the big offenders in these books, but I use a similar technique with those.) Another technique I use in all types of computer books is listing specific commands when necessary/appropriate under headings defining the type of task the user wants to perform. My theory is that the reader has some task (or programming issue) in mind, even if they don't know what command (or toolbar button) is applicable. ;-D > > I also have clients who prohibit the use of "description" as a subentry > unless the text actually uses the word "description." That's a good point! (I haven't had any clients who prohibited it, but I've wondered about that as a reason for the unanalyzed locators.) Thanks! Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing > > Dick Evans > > > > >Here's an indexing practice that I've often encountered, but never > understood > >the reasoning behind it. And, BTW, I'm not being critical of the practice > by > >asking this question, just expressing curiosity. Why do some indexers > create > >main headings followed by unanalyzed locators, yet analyze other references > >of the subject in a list of subentries for the same heading? In other words, > > >why analyze some but not all references to a given subject? Do the > unanalyzed > >locators represent: > > > >a) passages where the term is merely defined; > >b) passages where the subject is discussed very broadly that the unanalyzed > > locators are used instead of a subentry saying "described"; > >c) passages containing merely passing references to the subject. > >d) early instances of the term where the indexer didn't create subentries, > >then > > said later "Ooops, I better start analyzing this or I'll end up with > too > >many > > unanalyzed locators" but didn't go back and analyze the others. ;-D > > > >Comments? > > > >Lynn Moncrief > >TECHindex & Docs > >Technical and Scientific Indexing > > > ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 20:12:09 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Liability insurance and EIN In a message dated 96-10-16 11:17:32 EDT, you write: > One has asked that I carry liability insurance, which is a first. Does anyone > else carry liability insurance for their indexing business? I would love to > be able to state to the client that "XX% of indexers do not carry such > insurance," when I explain that I do not wish to pay for it for one project, > but would love to hear from people pro and con. Jan, I don't carry liability insurance either. (I'd might consider it if I were indexing a manual containing emergency shut-down procedures to a nuclear power plant, however, I'd charge enough for the index to make it worthwhile. ;-D) > > A second client has asked for me to get an EIN (employer identification > number) even though I have been doing business as a sole proprietor under my > SSN for 10 years now. They claim they will not do business unless you have > one, even though the Federal Government does not require it. Has anyone else > gotten an EIN? I've got the forms, but again, I would love to hear pros and > cons on that. I've never been asked for an EIN, nein, not ever. This client may have been burned by the IRS over the employee/independent contractor issue. If you really want this client, but don't want to get an EIN, would they be amenable to a signed independent contractor's agreement explicitly stating that, not only are you an independent contractor responsible for your own taxes, but that you determine your own work methods, set your own hours, use your own materials and equipment, and the other things that the IRS uses as rules of thumb? (I know that was a hopelessly long sentence.) Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing > > Jan (wishing I could just stick to the indexing end of business this morning) > > Wright > ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 20:12:15 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks In a message dated 96-10-16 12:39:09 EDT, you write: > > Everybody acknowledges that this is not the greatest. The first method > seems to have fewer problems than the second, as people seem able to > find a second index faster than they can find a special and too-broad > main heading. > > Another treatment is to put words that are being considered _as words_ > in italics, while most headings are in plain text. > "Vocabulary words" might be treated as that sort of thing. Maryann, A thousand thanks! I especially like your second suggestion and will recommend that to my "textbook" clients. I think I'll use bolding, reserving italics for publications, species names, etc. (A separate index could add to the publisher's costs in addition to the oft discussed issue here of whether index users always notice the existence of a separate index.) Hazel and Elinor, Many thanks to the both of you for your similar insights; i.e. don't sweat it but index them as they are. I think that using your suggestions in combination with Maryann's will handle this issue very nicely. This list is fantastic!!!!! :-) Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientfic Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 21:54:41 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Ann Parrish Subject: Fwd: early index I'm still a lurker on this list, but I'll break my silence to pass along a posting from C18-L. Someone inquired about the dates when indexes and reference notes were introduced to western books. Here is one answer: Ann Parrish Parrish Professional Indexing The Ethical Ghost: Editorial Services --------------------- Forwarded message: From: MLVONS@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU (Maja-Lisa) Sender: C18-L@PSUVM.PSU.EDU (18th Century Interdisciplinary Discussion) Reply-to: C18-L@PSUVM.PSU.EDU (18th Century Interdisciplinary Discussion) To: C18-L@PSUVM.PSU.EDU (Multiple recipients of list C18-L) Date: 96-10-16 18:55:38 EDT Peter Heylyn's 1652 includes a series of "tables" at the end of his _Cosmographie in Four Bookes_. They are alphabetical indexes and he prefaces them with: "Short Tables may not seeme proportionalble to so long a Work, expecially in an Age wherein there are so many that pretend to learning, who study more the Index then they do the Book." Clearly indexes precede the mid-17th century. ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 18:55:51 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Victoria Baker Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks Several of the textbook publishers I work for require that glossary word page locators be set in bold in the index. Then, whether the main entry warrants a "defined" subentry or not, it is clear where the term is defined. I enter the word as it is in the book, with few exceptions, and many of these seem strange until one realizes that it is a vocabulary word convention, that's all. This sometimes leads to a single glossary word sitting outside of a group that it might have been a part of, except that the form of the word has changed in order to be a viable main entry. Also, sometimes similar forms of the word are defined as glossary terms in text. I can't find a very good example right now (of course) but here's a similar example (the first one I could find), this is also from the human sexuality book I did a few weeks ago. Heterosexism, 588. *See* Heterosexual bias Heterosexual bias, 170-171, 588-589 In this example, the authors used heterosexual bias as the preferred term, but had defined heterosexism as a glossary term, which I was bound to reference (by the publisher). So I had to use a See reference for vocabulary control even though they were right next to each other. I wouldn't consider doing that in a scholarly work, but textbook indexes seem to have some particular requirements and functions (e.g. the boldface definition locator serves as a second glossary, of sorts). However, I have found myself constrained into main entries that are not the prettiest, even in scholarly. Also, once a textbook publisher sees the glossary terms locators in bold in their own or someone else's book, they almost invariably make it a rule. I agree with Elinor that the rules are flexible; I would add that trends in publishers' rules have their own influence, as well. Best--Victoria ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 18:55:54 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Victoria Baker Subject: Re: Liability insurance and EIN I don't know much about the liability insurance thing. My opinion is that it is not necessary. EIN The *1995 Tax Guide for Small Business* (p. 6), IRS publication number 334, states: "You generally use your social security number as your taxpayer identification number.... However, every partnership, corporation..., and certain sole proprietorships must have an employer identification number (EIN) to use.... Sole proprietors must have EINs if they: 1) Pay wages to one or more employees, or 2) Must file any pension or excise tax returns, including those for alcohol, tobacco, or firearms. .....If you are not required to have an EIN, use your social security number as your business taxpayer identification number...." I personally would not be inclined to submit to a publisher's request for a government ID number I wasn't legally required to obtain or use. Best, Victoria ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 22:41:05 -0500 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: KINGH@SNYSYRV1.BITNET Subject: Re: Unanalyzed locators after main entries with subs I had to use unanalyzed entries after a main heading and subentries in the last book I indexed. If I hadn't decided to do that, I would have ended up with about 10 subentries followed by 1 or at most 2 pages. The index was already too long. My rule of thumb is that my sub-entries must be followed by at least 2 and preferably 3 pages or page ranges otherwise they get stuck with the main entry. HMK (kingh@vax.cs.hscsyr.edu) ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 23:06:00 -0500 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: KINGH@SNYSYRV1.BITNET Subject: Re: Liability insurance and EIN I got my EIN because I didn't want to use my ssn for business and because I provide other services besides indexing and wanted to win some state contracts for which, here in NY, an EIN is often required. HMK (kingh@vax.cs.hscsyr.edu) ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 20:47:55 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Peter Rooney Subject: email address of INDEX-L not correct? (Sorry if this bothers the group - perhaps it should really go to LISTSERV - but it's not a command, it's a problem, and I don't have the name of any person to talk to. Also, I suspect others have the same problem. I think the initial welcoming letter is misleading.) I use Netcom and am subscribed to INDEX-L. I tried to reply to one of the posted messages, so I composed my message and sent it into the ether. A day later, a message appears in my email stating that Host INDEX-L@BINGVMB.BITNET was not found, so my transmission was unsuccessful. And yet, that is the email address that is automatically inserted when I (try to) reply to a message. It turns out that the correct email address is: INDEX-L@BINGVMB.CC.BINGHAMTON.EDU Fine, but it means I have to leave the "read mail" subsystem and go to the "send mail" subsystem even to enter the address (at least, it seems to be so in Netcom). This is a bother. Can the LISTSERV (or keeper of the list) get the "host" BINGVMB.BITNET to be recognized? or else insert the correct, but longer, email address when messages are sent to INDEX-L? I wonder if this will get through. *** ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 20:57:08 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Peter Rooney Subject: pricing by the word > Someone (H. Schinske?) asked whether indexes should be priced by the > number of words of the text to be indexed. This can go into the equation. A price of one cent per word ($.01/word) comes to a respectable figure. For example, a 100,000-word book might make a $1000 index. But then I average that with a price per line (say $1.00/line) and perhaps a couple of other measures, and I often present the result as a flat fee. I heard one production editor say that her company budgets two cents a word for the index. Perhaps this includes typesetting and printing, because it does seem high. But definitely, publishers think in terms of words - shouldn't we? *** ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 22:20:17 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Roberta Horowitz Subject: Re: Liability insurance and EIN In-Reply-To: <199610162117.OAA29423@mail6> This month's issue of Home Office Computing has an article on Liability Insurance for home businesses. The include descriptions of different types of policies and what you may need. Buss Dale D. Liability insurance: so sue me. Home Office Computing 1996 October;14(10): 68-72,74. The August issue discussed health insurance and the September issue equipment insurance. The www page for the small business web page (which has lots of good information on it), is http://www.smalloffice.com Roberta Horowitz roberta@netcom.com ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 01:48:40 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks In a message dated 96-10-16 22:14:17 EDT, Victoria wrote: > I can't find a very good example right now (of course) but here's a similar > example (the first one I could find), this is also from the human sexuality > book I did a few weeks ago. > > Heterosexism, 588. *See* Heterosexual bias > Heterosexual bias, 170-171, 588-589 Victoria, Puhleeeeeze, tell me how you got boldface type to come over the Internet intact!!!!! That is so cool!!! ;-D > > In this example, the authors used heterosexual bias as the preferred term, > but had defined heterosexism as a glossary term, which I was bound to > reference (by the publisher). So I had to use a See reference for > vocabulary control even though they were right next to each other. Yes, I've had strange juxtapositions like that indexes, too, for the exact reason that you gave. Didn't it make you wonder, though, why the authors' preferred term was different from their glossary term? ;-D I found a similar situation in a cancer encyclopedia I participated in indexing with other indexers. If I remember correctly, the title of one chapter and the glossary definition (on the very same page, right under that heading) spelled "hematopoesis" as "haematopoesis" or something like that. Yet they used the "hema..." version throughout the rest of the chapter. Go figure. I think I used the same solution you did (or is this wishful thinking?), especially because I had no idea how many entries would have come between haem... and hem... when all of our indexes were finally merged together. (There wasn't a stated requirement that we index the glossary entries, as far as I know, but it made sense to do so.) > > I wouldn't consider doing that in a scholarly work, but textbook indexes > seem to have some particular requirements and functions (e.g. the boldface > definition locator serves as a second glossary, of sorts). However, I have > found myself constrained into main entries that are not the prettiest, even > in scholarly. Also, once a textbook publisher sees the glossary terms > locators in bold in their own or someone else's book, they almost invariably > make it a rule. Not only textbook publishers. One client asked me to submit future indexes with all main headings in bold because someone else in the office saw an index like that and liked it. (Turned out that I really liked that style too. It tremendously enhanced the readibility/scannability of the index, IMHO. Plus, Macrex handled it all automatically with aplomb.) Anyway, given the trend of the responses here, I truly feel more comfortable indexing the non-noun vocabulary words as they appear without some Editorial/Indexing Police coming to take away my shingle. ;-D > > I agree with Elinor that the rules are flexible; I would add that trends in > publishers' rules have their own influence, as well. I agree. Someone on this list, a while back, referred to a book or article about how and when to bend the rules. It sounds truly apropos here. Thanks!! Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 01:48:42 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Re: early index In a message dated 96-10-16 21:57:05 EDT, Anne wrote, quoting Peter Heylyn (1652): > "Short Tables may not seeme proportionalble to so long a Work, > expecially in an Age wherein there are so many that pretend to learning, who > study more the Index then they do the Book." It seemes sometimes, in this Age of Publish or Perish, that the Indexes are indeed Better than the Bookes. ;-D Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 07:05:00 BST-1 Reply-To: hcalvert@cix.compulink.co.uk Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hilary Calvert Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks I think I'd put these words in `quotes' - my gut feeling is that it's possible to get away with non-standard indexing terms by doing that. I'd feel that italics or bold might draw unnecessary attention to these terms. However, I'm not *absolutely* sure just what kind of terms are being referred to. Can we have some examples? (I realise that this subject appears to have been thoroughly discussed already, but I only read my Index-L messages once a day!) Drusilla ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 07:05:00 BST-1 Reply-To: hcalvert@cix.compulink.co.uk Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hilary Calvert Subject: Re: Fwd: early index Indexes go back way beyond the 17th C. Our local Society of Indexers Group had a wonderful afternoon in Durham University Library where the librarian had set out books with indexes or proto-indexes(?) dating back to (ISTR) 1100. I have a copy of Gerardes Herbal from the 1590s with several fascinating indexes (an example was included in the Maryville Conference Proceedings). Drusilla ================================================================= ======== Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 23:43:30 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Victoria Baker Subject: Bold coming thru on e-mail At 01:48 AM 10/17/96 -0400, Lynn wrote: >Puhleeeeeze, tell me how you got boldface type to come over the Internet >intact!!!!! That is so cool!!! ;-D It was totally accidental! This IS exciting. I'm sending back to entire list figuring others would like to know this too. I used generic bold/end bold coding. To illustrate, I'll use "bee" to indicate the letter "b" (hope this works): BOLD which should yield: BOLD I wonder if generic italic coding will work? I'm trying same as bold above but with the letter "i" instead of "b": italic You'll have to let me know, please(!), because I don't see my own posts. Best--Victoria ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 00:07:53 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Victoria Baker Subject: Bold coming thru on e-mail P.S. One other thing, though, about bold (and if it works, italic) coming through with the use of generic coding is that if the message is quoted back in reply all of the coding is lost to the recipient--it's returned to plain text. --Victoria ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 10:59:00 PDT Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Richard Wright-ARCHIVES Subject: Re: Bold NOT coming thru on e-mail Victoria- Sorry. My Microsoft mail operating within a corporate wide area network - and with a 'firewall' between us and the 'real' Internet - does NOT give me bold or italic. Shame. Regarsd, Richard @ BBC, UK ---------- From: owner-index-l To: Multiple recipients of list INDEX-L Subject: Bold coming thru on e-mail Date: 16 October 1996 11:43pm At 01:48 AM 10/17/96 -0400, Lynn wrote: >Puhleeeeeze, tell me how you got boldface type to come over the Internet >intact!!!!! That is so cool!!! ;-D It was totally accidental! This IS exciting. I'm sending back to entire list figuring others would like to know this too. I used generic bold/end bold coding. To illustrate, I'll use "bee" to indicate the letter "b" (hope this works): BOLD which should yield: BOLD I wonder if generic italic coding will work? I'm trying same as bold above but with the letter "i" instead of "b": italic You'll have to let me know, please(!), because I don't see my own posts. Best--Victoria ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 11:11:00 PDT Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Richard Wright-ARCHIVES Subject: Re: email address of INDEX-L not correct? All: I have a related but different problem replying to index-l. Using Microsoft mail over a corporate network, if I click on 'Reply' I get an email addressed to the alias 'owner-index-l', which is in fact the address: owner-index-l@BINGVMB.CC.BINGHAMTON.EDU Whereas the required address is: INDEX-L@BINGVMB.CC.BINGHAMTON.EDU So, like the Netcom user, I have to delete the 'automatic' addressee and get the required one from the address book. I small matter, except that if I forget the mail disappears without a trace. Regards, Richard BBC, UK ---------- From: owner-index-l To: Multiple recipients of list INDEX-L Subject: email address of INDEX-L not correct? Date: 16 October 1996 08:47pm (Sorry if this bothers the group - perhaps it should really go to LISTSERV - but it's not a command, it's a problem, and I don't have the name of any person to talk to. Also, I suspect others have the same problem. I think the initial welcoming letter is misleading.) I use Netcom and am subscribed to INDEX-L. I tried to reply to one of the posted messages, so I composed my message and sent it into the ether. A day later, a message appears in my email stating that Host INDEX-L@BINGVMB.BITNET was not found, so my transmission was unsuccessful. And yet, that is the email address that is automatically inserted when I (try to) reply to a message. It turns out that the correct email address is: INDEX-L@BINGVMB.CC.BINGHAMTON.EDU Fine, but it means I have to leave the "read mail" subsystem and go to the "send mail" subsystem even to enter the address (at least, it seems to be so in Netcom). This is a bother. Can the LISTSERV (or keeper of the list) get the "host" BINGVMB.BITNET to be recognized? or else insert the correct, but longer, email address when messages are sent to INDEX-L? I wonder if this will get through. *** ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 07:14:31 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Cynthia D. Bertelsen" Subject: Re: Educating Academics About Indexing via Newspaper Articles I think that The Chronicle IS a good idea. Who wants to approach them about this? Maybe a group effort would be possible? At 10:59 AM 10/15/96 -0500, Jean A. Thompson wrote: >Cynthia Bertelson suggested a series of newspaper articles to educate >academics about the value of hiring a professional indexer instead of >indexing their own publications. Perhaps a good vehicle for such a series >would be _The Chronicle of Higher Education_ which comes out weekly 48 >times per year. What do Index-Lers think? Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 20:44:39 +0000 From: BITNET list server at BINGVMB (1.8a) Subject: File: "INDEX-L LOG9610C" To: Julius Ariail > > Jean Thompson > > ************ Cynthia D. Bertelsen INDEXER Blacksburg, VA cbertel@nrv.net http://www.vt.edu:10021/B/bertel/ndx.html ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 07:23:37 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hazel Blumberg-McKee Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks In-Reply-To: <199610170606.CAA27160@polaris.net> On Thu, 17 Oct 1996, Hilary Calvert wrote: > I think I'd put these words in `quotes' - my gut feeling is that it's > possible to get away with non-standard indexing terms by doing that. I'd > feel that italics or bold might draw unnecessary attention to these > terms. However, I'm not *absolutely* sure just what kind of terms are > being referred to. Can we have some examples? I'm currently working (frantically) on a linguistics book. It's a scholarly book, not a textbook. The author defines any number of terms as she goes along. So, I have entries like this in my index: code switching defined code mixing defined multilingual, defined. _See also_ multilingualism multilingualism defined natural, defined polyglot, defined There are several subheadings under "code switching" and "code mixing." There are _lots_ of subheadings under "multilingualism." "Defined" is the only subheading for "multilingual," "natural," and "polyglot." Don't know if I answered Drusilla's question. Hazel Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) sign that your cat has learned your Internet password: little kitty carpal-tunnel braces near the scratching post ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 07:25:36 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hazel Blumberg-McKee Subject: Re: Bold NOT coming thru on e-mail In-Reply-To: <199610170954.FAA08390@polaris.net> Neither the bold nor the ital came through on e-mail for me. Hazel Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) sign that your cat has learned your Internet password: little kitty carpal-tunnel braces near the scratching post ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 07:20:08 -0500 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Rollie Littlewood Subject: Re: Internet Virus Warning At 04:07 PM 10/16/96 -0400, Bob Richardson wrote: >All - - > >Just received this message from a colleague who is not given to frivolous >alarms. I don't know anything about it (i.e., if it is a hoax or a real >threat), but thought that it might be well to post the warning. Can anyone >clarify this? > >Bob Richardson > >. *************************************************** > >Dear Bob, >Herewith message copied from the email list I do still belong to: >This is a copy of a warning just received from Jim Clegg >(jsclegg@ucdavis.edu): >Subject: new virus warning > > There is a new virus on the internet, there is no CLEANSING >available for this as yet, please read below and be careful. > This is being sent to a general audience, to caution with file >sharing.= >> DO NOT DOWNLOADANY FILE NAMED PKZIP300 REGARDLESS OF >EXENSION. >>A NEW Trojan Horse Virus has emerged on the Internet with the name >> PKZIP300.ZIP, so named as to give the impression that this file >>is a new version of the PKZIP software used to "zip" compressed files >>DO NOT DOWNLOAD THIS FILE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!! If you install >>or expand the file, >> the virus WILL wipe your hard disk clean and affect >> modems at 14.4 and higher. This is an extremely destructive virus >> >> there is NOT yet a way of cleaning this one up. >>> PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO ANYONE YOU KNOW. I believe that this is several years old. It does exist, as I understand, but never "achieved" widespread distribution. It can, however, be quite destructive. It is a "Trojan Horse," rather than a virus per se--i.e., it is a stand-alone program which does something other than what it purports to do. Trojan horses are seldom detected by anti-virus programs before they try to do anything, but some anti-virus software which is constantly looking for signs of suspicious activity might sense something was wrong is you actually tried to run this program. See http://www.pkware.com/fake.html for further information (PKWare is the publisher of PKZIP, etc.). ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 08:37:36 -0500 Reply-To: becohen@prairienet.org Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Barbara E. Cohen" Subject: Re: Fwd: early index Early indexes are the subject of an article by Hans Wellisch that appeared some years ago.... I'll try to dig it out. The article is on indexes in early herbals, which "needed" indexes to locate cures for ailments (something you would want to look up quickly). One of the interesting things is that the alphabetical listing in the earliest ones only went as far as the first letter of the entry... no one thought at first to index each entry in either letter-by-letter or word-by-word order. I come back to that occasionally when I am reminding myself how un-intuitive I find any sort order! Barbara -- Barbara E. Cohen Indexing & Editorial Services Champaign, IL ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 09:48:27 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: WordenDex@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Liability insurance and EIN While setting up my business, my attorney advised me that liability insurance would be a waste of money. ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 09:53:43 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: WordenDex@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Unanalyzed locators after main entries with subs Here's an (f) reason: Line length restrictions. Many analyzed subs have only only locator. By keeping all subs with more than one locator and "pulling up" subs with just one, perhaps 5-7 lines per main heading can be saved. ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 10:21:59 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Cynthia D. Bertelsen" Subject: Re: early indexes The Wellisch article is: "The oldest printed indexes," The Indexer 15 (2): 73-82, 1986. (Oct.) Other interesting bits of information can be had in "Early humanist indexing," from The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, by Elizabeth Eisenstein (quoted in The Indexer 14 (1): 58. 1984. (April) and Wellisch has done another short piece on index history, "Indexing." In Encyclopedia of Library History, ed. by Wayne A. Wiegand and Donald G. Davis, Jr., 268-70. New York: Garland, 1994, At 08:37 AM 10/17/96 -0500, Barbara E. Cohen wrote: >Early indexes are the subject of an article by Hans Wellisch >that appeared some years ago.... I'll try to dig it out. The >article is on indexes in early herbals, which "needed" indexes >to locate cures for ailments (something you would want to look >up quickly). One of the interesting things is that the alphabetical >listing in the earliest ones only went as far as the first letter >of the entry... no one thought at first to index each entry in >either letter-by-letter or word-by-word order. I come back to >that occasionally when I am reminding myself how un-intuitive I >find any sort order! > >Barbara > >-- >Barbara E. Cohen >Indexing & Editorial Services >Champaign, IL > > ************ Cynthia D. Bertelsen INDEXER Blacksburg, VA cbertel@nrv.net http://www.vt.edu:10021/B/bertel/ndx.html ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 08:54:59 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Carolyn G. Weaver" Subject: Re: Author indexes are free In-Reply-To: <199610162043.NAA07922@mx4.u.washington.edu> When I first started indexing about 4 years ago, I did three nursing books for a major publisher in New York City at the outrageously high rate of $2/page. With 3 indexes done, payment for one deposited, outstanding invoices for 2, and one more sitting on my desk to start work on, I called the editor to find out why the payments for #2 and #3 were late. I was told that the PUBLISHER felt my rates were too high and was refusing to authorize payment. (I did have a signed contract, btw.) Seems that they customarily got their indexes done by "out of work actors" for no more than $10 per hour. (I was quoting an hourly rate of $20/hr at that time.) I told the editor that (1) I would be returning the pages for the book I hadn't started; (2) would be turning the outstanding bills for #2 and #3 over to my lawyer [which I didn't have, btw!] unless I received the payment in full within a week; and (3) that I wished them well using their actors as indexers since I wasn't willing to provide a professional service for hamburger-flipping wages. For some reason I never heard from that publisher again; but I DID get my payment within a week! Carolyn Weaver Bellevue, WA. phone: 206/930-4348 email: cweaver@u.washington.edu On Wed, 16 Oct 1996, Hazel Blumberg-McKee wrote: > What an excellent posting of Rica Night's! > > I have to admit that I'm waiting for the what-goes-around-comes-around > phenomenon to take place with an old, old client. Maybe it'll happen. > > I used to index LOTS of books for this particular press. The folks there > were my main clients. I knew someone else who also did lots of indexing > work for the press. Suddenly, neither of us were receiving any work from > our biggest client. Nary a word. The other indexer learned that the > client had found a couple of impoverished students who lived in the same > town as the one the press was in. These students were receiving *all* the > press's indexing work simply because they were charging astonishingly low > rates. > > I know that neither the other indexer nor I were overcharging the press. I > know we *loved* the books we worked on and that the press was very > satisfied with our work. However, bucks seemed more important. > > I haven't heard anything from the press in a long time, and I don't > think the other indexer has, either. Well, maybe the impoverished students > are doing a good job. Who can know. > > > > Hazel > > Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) > sign that your cat has learned your Internet password: > little kitty carpal-tunnel braces near the scratching post > ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 09:05:54 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Jonathan Sachs Subject: Re: Liability insurance and EIN A little insight into what's happening here: The government generates a constant stream of judicial and administrative decisions in which people are held responsible for violating this or that aspect of the tax code. These are read by attorneys who are paid to keep their employers or clients out of trouble. The attorneys then write letters advising that in view of such-and-such a case, it would be prudent to take this-or-that new precaution when dealing with independent contractors. And you, at the end of the pipeline, are informed that you've got to jump through some new hoop, such as getting an EIN. The same process applies to liability insurance. Somewhere, somebody got held liable for something an independent contractor did or didn't do on their behalf. Then all the attorneys advised all of their clients to require all of their independent contractors to get liability insurance, Just In Case. By the time one of these decisions affects us, it's usually non-negotiable. The people you can talk to don't have authority to bend the rules, because The Attorney Said It. The attorney has moved on, and isn't interested in talking to you anyway; her job is to prevent the company from getting sued, and she's done that. She gains nothing by making an exception just because the rule makes no sense when applied to you and prevents both your and your client to do your jobs. If all of these limitations started interfering with the overall functioning of the company that would be a different story, but realistically, things rarely even approach that point. Localized chaos and suffering, striking here and there at random, is all that happens. In essence, the government is making it harder and harder for everyone to do business, as a consequence of its normal operation. It's extremely frustrating, and I don't know a thing that can be done about it. Jonathan Sachs Sand River Software, Inc. ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 12:11:17 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: JanCW@AOL.COM Subject: Re: early index In a message dated 96-10-17 09:43:24 EDT, becohen@prairienet.org (Barbara E. Cohen) writes: > Early indexes are the subject of an article by Hans Wellisch > that appeared some years ago.... I'll try to dig it out. Please do! and please forward on any info to me - I will add all info to the history of indexing Web page! This is great! Jan ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 12:15:59 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Karl E. Vogel" Organization: Control Data Systems Inc. Subject: Re: Liability insurance and EIN >> On Thu, 17 Oct 1996 09:05:54 -0700, >> Jonathan Sachs said: J> In essence, the government is making it harder and harder for everyone to do J> business, as a consequence of its normal operation. It's extremely J> frustrating, and I don't know a thing that can be done about it. 1776 or 1984. Ain't no middle ground. -- Karl Vogel vogelke@c17.wpafb.af.mil 513-255-3688 Control Data Systems, Inc. ASC/YCOA, Wright-Patterson AFB, OH 45433 ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 09:29:00 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Elinor Lindheimer Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks Victoria, I never learned proper "vocabulary control," and other things I presume are taught in library school, but I have faced the same predicament in indexing, when a glossary term is different from the heading I had chosen. If there is any conceivable difference between the terms, as there is in your example, I don't mind seeing them both. > Heterosexism, 588. *See* Heterosexual bias > Heterosexual bias, 170-171, 588-589 I think of "heterosexism" as a general pattern of feelings, whereas I see "heterosexual bias" as an actual behavior. One question, though (and forgive me if I'm ignorant of the proper rule): Is there a reason why you used a "See" rather than a "See also" reference? ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 09:28:58 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Elinor Lindheimer Subject: Re: Fwd: early index Ann Parrish wrote: >Peter Heylyn's 1652 includes a series of "tables" at the end of his >_Cosmographie in Four Bookes_. They are alphabetical indexes and he prefaces >them with: "Short Tables may not seeme proportionalble to so long a Work, >expecially in an Age wherein there are so many that pretend to learning, who >study more the Index then they do the Book." Clearly indexes precede the >mid-17th century. > I'll never forget seeing James Burke's last show on inventions that changed the world, when he said that indexes were the way that access to knowledge was simplified. He was talking about soon after the beginning of book printing... Elinor ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 09:28:51 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Elinor Lindheimer Subject: Re: Unanalyzed locators after main entries with subs Lynn wrote: > [A]...technique I use in all types of computer books is listing >specific commands when necessary/appropriate under headings defining the type >of task the user wants to perform. My theory is that the reader has some task >(or programming issue) in mind, even if they don't know what command (or >toolbar button) is applicable. ;-D This is what is called "task-oriented indexing," and it's extremely useful to the reader. For example, imagine looking up "search and replace" and finding nothing, because it's all under the "Find" command. The term "searching" or something similar must be in the index, either with double posting or as a cross reference. The only problem I run into is when the task and the command have the same or a similar name. In those cases, I generally use the command name. In task-oriented indexing the gerund is often the most logical grammatical form to use, by the way. I am amazed and very pleased by the quality of responses and the level of expertise, experience, and openness to discussion among the participants on this list... Elinor Lindheimer elinorl@mcn.org ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 09:56:53 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Angela Howard Subject: Re: Unanalyzed locators after main entries with subs On Wed, 16 Oct 1996, Wildefire@AOL.COM wrote: > ... Do the unanalyzed locators represent: > >a) passages where the term is merely defined; >b) passages where the subject is discussed very broadly that the unanalyzed > locators are used instead of a subentry saying "described"; >c) passages containing merely passing references to the subject. >d) early instances of the term where the indexer didn't create subentries, then > said later "Ooops, I better start analyzing this or I'll end up with too many > unanalyzed locators" but didn't go back and analyze the others. ;-D I create unalyzed locators in indexes only for reason b). In the case of reason a), I always create a subhead called "definition of", since that is a reference I think readers often specifically look for (at least I do, when I read a book). The situation where I have both analyzed (via subheads) and unanalyzed locators usually comes up for me when the topic is discussed generally on several pages (or a range of pages), but there are specific aspects to the topic that I think readers will be looking for and they won't want to wade through all the general information to find it. ____________________________________ Angela M. Howard Technical Writing and Indexing angela@sb.aol.com (805)882-2350 x126 ____________________________________ ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 10:11:35 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Angela Howard Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks On Wed, 16 Oct 1996, Wildefire@AOL.COM wrote: >OK folks, here's another question. I've found that textbooks often contain >vocabulary words that, IMHO, should be indexed, however they are often >adjectives, adverbs, or verbs. In other words, they aren't nouns. I've jumped >through hoops trying to recast them as nouns. For example, I've converted >verbs to their gerund (noun) form, I've tacked nouns onto the end of >adjectives when doing so doesn't distort or limit the scope of the term (not >always possible), etc. However, not all vocabulary words are amenable to this >type of treatment. This issue arises nearly every time I index a textbook. >How do the rest of you handle this problem? Do you bend the rule about using >only nouns as main headings and index the vocabulary words exactly as they >appear in the text or what? (I have seen them indexed as they appear in the >text, but non-noun forms do look strange to me in an index.) Thanks for any >input. I've never thought that using only nouns as main headings was a "rule", but that it was only one option for the style of an index. Just as the style of the index could be that all main headings are capitalized and all subheadings are not (except for proper nouns), you could have the style where all main headings must be nouns. So if you have the kind of index that warrants using other kinds of words as main headings (and it sounds like you do), it is best to pick a different style. One thing I learned about audience as a tech writer, is that if your audience is closer to a beginner's level, they are more likely to look up verbs than nouns. But that may just stem from the fact that we write beginning-level manuals much more task-oriented than feature-oriented, so the whole "feel" of the manual is more verb-like. So for a beginning audience, I'll have entries for both "creating tables" and "tables, creating", but for a more advanced audience, I'll just have "tables, creating". I guess the bottom line is to consider the audience. It's most important to index the way they are likely to look it up, and if that breaks the style of index, maybe a different style is in order. Even if the noun-only thing is a "rule", I think it is better to bend the rules in the name of usability than it is to contort the entries to fit the rule and thereby make the index less usable. ____________________________________ Angela M. Howard Technical Writing and Indexing angela@sb.aol.com (805)882-2350 x126 ____________________________________ ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 10:58:34 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Sonsie Subject: Re: Author indexes are free At 08:54 AM 10/17/96 -0700, Carolyn G. Weaver wrote: >I told the editor that (1) I would be returning the pages for the book I >hadn't started; (2) would be turning the outstanding bills for #2 and #3 >over to my lawyer [which I didn't have, btw!] unless I received the >payment in full within a week; and (3) that I wished them well using their >actors as indexers since I wasn't willing to provide a professional >service for hamburger-flipping wages. For some reason I never heard from >that publisher again; but I DID get my payment within a week! Good for you, Carolyn! The gall of those people, to refuse to pay you even though you had a signed contract. And I bet you're just as glad you never did hear from them again. Who needs that kind of nonsense? =Sonsie= ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 14:03:26 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Bold coming thru on e-mail In a message dated 96-10-17 03:10:49 EDT, you write: > P.S. One other thing, though, about bold (and if it works, italic) coming > through with the use of generic coding is that if the message is quoted back > in reply all of the coding is lost to the recipient--it's returned to plain > text. > Victoria, Not only did your bold and italics come through on your own posts, but the bold came through again when Elinor quoted your original message in her reply to what you said about heterosexism vs. heterosexual bias. :-) IMHO, once the generic codes you mentioned are embedded, they stay there and mailreaders capable of detecting/displaying them display them again. On AOL (version 3.0), we can exchange messages, at least with each other, using bold and italicized text, colored backgrounds and text, etc. It may be that AOL automatically embeds the generic codes when we push one of the formatting buttons in our mailreader, so I'd be curious to see if anyone receiving this message receives it with the bolded and italicized words I formatted in the preceding sentence and in my sig. And, I'll really be blown away if anyone, especially non-AOLers, receives it with the blue background I applied, which would suggest that there are codes for color as well. It may be that certain mailreaders, such as Hazel's, can't detect or respond to the codes. (Richard, that *may* be the problem and not your firewall.) Now, I'm hoping that someone will send me a book to index that will tell me all about this technique/technology--a new one on me! ;-D BTW, I'm privately forwarding you copies of your own posts so that you can see how the formatting came through. :-) (You can send the listserve a REPLICATE command, if you wish, which will cause your own posts to be echoed back to you, BTW.) Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 14:14:57 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Charlotte Skuster Subject: index-l's address Peter Rooney and all, As I understand it, bitnet is on its way out. As a result, fewer nodes are recognizing bitnet addresses. Thus, when you hit the reply key, *some* of you will not be successful. There is absolutely nothing that I can do about it. I have talked to the listserv person in our computer center about it. Sometime in the near future, Binghamton will stop using bitnet also and the return address will no longer cause problems. Sorry for the inconvenience....in the meantime use index-l@bingvmb.cc.binghamton.edu. And...as a reminder...for technical problems with index-l you can contact me. Thanks for your patience. Charlotte Skuster Index-l Moderator Phone:607-777-4122 cskuster@library.lib.binghamton.edu ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 14:03:41 -0500 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group Comments: Warning -- original Sender: tag was maryann@REVISOR.LEG.STATE.MN.US From: Maryann Corbett Organization: Revisor of Statutes Subject: legisindex mailing list Some time ago I invited all those who do indexing in statutes, session laws, legislative documents, or administrative rules to participate in a discussion group. The group is up and running--sort of. Our technowizards tell me that we haven't the resources to create a true listserve, so basically I'm operating a mailing list: Participants send messages to me, and I send them to all the addresses linked to the alias LEGISINDEX. The bug in the system is that some of these addresses aren't working. The mail bounces every time. I'm afraid I haven't got time to research every problem address, and I hate for people to miss things when they asked to be included. I've sent out three or four postings. So if you asked to be part of my list of legislative indexers, and you are not receiving e-mail on that subject from my address, please don't hesitat to get in touch with me again. Naturally, if you didn't see the earlier message and you are interested, please send me a message and I'll be happy to add your address to the list. I'll be even happier if the address works! -- Maryann Corbett Language Specialist Office of the Revisor of Statutes Minnesota Legislature 612-297-2952 ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 15:15:23 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: DP1301@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Bold coming thru on e-mail Not! Sorry Lynn, It doesn't work every time. And even though I'm on AOL too, there's no blue, no bold, just plain text. Running your message through the Index-L system sometimes removes all of the formatting. Victoria's formatting came through just fine though. Deborah Deborah Patton Baltimore, MD 410/243-4688 dp1301@aol.com ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 14:31:00 -0600 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Carol Roberts Subject: Re: Not left-handed >Carol, > >Yes, I'm the one with the recorder. Still have my 40-year old recorded, >scuffed at the mouthpiece from my 2 big front teeth! Same one! I haven't >played in years, and, of course, the recorder is very dried out from age and >our dry desert climate. > >I used to do informal ensemble playing - just for the fun of it. I loved it! > None of us turned out to be musicians -- we all just loved music. > >Janet It's a pity you're not still playing it, Janet. Wouldn't it be a kick to do some duets at the conference? (Well, not *at* the conference exactly.) My recorders are both plastic, so they're not terribly vulnerable to dryness or neglect. They have a good sound, though. And from Deborah: >I play recorder too - have soprano, alto, tenor in wood and plastic, and I >think I have a sopranino. Played in a group that would play a piece through >once, then we do it again, but switch instrument sizes (voices). It was >great fun, and mentally challenging. I've looked for people to do it with >here - but it seems to be passe. So, what do you think, Deborah. Want to bring a recorder to Winston-Salem? >From Alexandra: >How many of you have alphabetized the spice jars? Of course! >I'm curious to know how many of you live in homes headed by felines as is >mine. We have three cats: Sheba, Madeline, and Midnight. Sheba is my personal cat; she's slinky and jet black, often won't tolerate being petted or picked up, but hangs out in my arms when I'm in my office sitting at the keyboard. She's the quietest cat I ever met--almost mever meows and you have to listen real close for her purr. Her eyes are green. Madeline is our stupid idiot cat. Basically, she's not very bright, so she scratches the kids a lot, just because she feels threatened when they walk by her . . . or when they simply move. Madeline is also our most expensive, having recently survived a liver disease. Midnight is the little fluffball in our house, petite, longhaired, black, amber eyes, and very sweet and gentle. >From Lynn: >You sing Balkan music? Have you ever heard anything by a wild and crazy group >called the 3 Mustafas? They play and sing music from a variety of genres >(especially Middle Eastern), however, they are from the Balkans and do some >Balkan music as well. (They're very good at whatever they play.) No, do they have any tapes or CDs? I'll check 'em out. I just adore Middle Eastern and east European music. (And I like to dance to it, too--at least I used to.) >Carol, your highly creative nature makes you an honorary left-hander. Thank you, Lynn. I do indeed feel honor. Actually, though I'm not left-handed myself, I did produce one lefty, my 4-yr-old. >From Sonsie: >Get him an A-440 tuning fork and teach him how to bop it on his knee, then >press it to the bridge of the cello, which makes the tone resonate just like >a string being plucked. He should be able to get his A string right, then >tune down in fifths. I feel vindicated! We got the tuning fork, and Bob was able to tune the one string, but that was as far as he could get. He hasn't got a very good ear, I'm afraid. But I do, so I tuned down in fifths, and it worked beautifully. I'd never heard of the technique before (never played a string instrument myself), but I figured out that I could do it that way. The only difficulty was that the range is *way* below my singing range so I had to keep skipping octaves. I will definitely show Bob the part of your message about the harmonic stuff. I think he know's a trick something like this, but I'm not sure he was doing it quite right. Thanks so much! I may get back to you with other questions. Again from Sonsie: >MY peculiarity that drives my husband nuts (and probably is more than a >little anal) is that I "organize" the dishwasher. This has become a running >family joke; no matter who loads it, I have to go in and fix everything so >it fits correctly. By correctly, I mean in such a manner that I can get the >maximum number of items in a load. And also that there are no nested spoons, >dirty surfaces are toward the spray, and so on. But just to show you what I >am up against, my son once ran the d/w with the entire top shelf filled by >one item: a pizza tray! (Another time he did the same thing with my favorite >huge serving bowl, which unfortunately was made of some strange fiberglass >sort of material which melted into a gooey modern sculpture in the overly >hot water.) I used to do this sort of thing, too, until I realized how uncomfortable it was making my family. The message I was sending them, every time I redid somebody else's work, was that there's only one way to do this--my way. It made them feel the same way I feel when I'm putting something together and Bob goes through it and "retightens" all the screws I've just done. I also got a taste of my own medicine when I visited my mother-in-law and she reloaded the dishwasher after I had done it. I've been trying to learn that often (not always) other people's ways of doing things are good enough. And good enough is, well, good enough! But I sure do wish people would put things back where they found them. My latest pet peeve is when my 10-yr-old borrows my stuff and doesn't return it. We worked out a mutually agreeable system: when she wants to borrow something--e.g., my markers--she pays me a dollar. When she returns the markers, she gets the dollar back. She is somehow much better able to keep her dollar in mind than to keep somebody else's markers in mind, so I get my markers back. Whew! Long reply to many posts! Cheers, Carol ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 14:31:23 -0600 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Carol Roberts Subject: Re: Liability insurance and EIN >One has asked that I carry liability insurance, which is a first. Where is the liability in indexing? You mean, somebody might sue for libel or whatever because of something in the index? I don't get it. > >A second client has asked for me to get an EIN (employer identification >number) even though I have been doing business as a sole proprietor under my >SSN for 10 years now. When I've done business with private individuals who were required to have an EIN (daycare providers), they used their social security number. Cheers, Carol Roberts, indexer and copy editor | Life is good. Carol.Roberts@mixcom.com | Milwaukee, WI | ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 14:31:31 -0600 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Carol Roberts Subject: Re: Unanalyzed locators after main entries with subs >a) passages where the term is merely defined; Yes, I sometimes single out the spot where the term is defined. I guess it's because I find that very usefuly in indexes myself. >b) passages where the subject is discussed very broadly that the unanalyzed > locators are used instead of a subentry saying "described"; Not sure I understand this one. >c) passages containing merely passing references to the subject. I leave those out of the index altogether. I've never had a client ask me to include passing mentions (so far). >d) early instances of the term where the indexer didn't create subentries, >then > said later "Ooops, I better start analyzing this or I'll end up with too >many > unanalyzed locators" but didn't go back and analyze the others. ;-D When that happens to me, I always go back and look at those pages to see which of the earlier passages should be listed among the subentries. Typically, if I have an entry in my index that looks like this: cats, 1, 5, 7 breeds of, 8-9, 10, 22 gum disease in, 2-4, 8, 18 (is this the situation you have in mind, Lynn?), it's because the passages on pp. 1, 5, 7 are one-shot deals. They have nothing in common except being about cats. When users look at this, I expect them to think simply that there's some additional info about cats on those three pages, but they'll have to look there to see just what it is. If they're wondering whether there's anything in the book about, say, how to clip a cat's claws, they'll have to look on (only) three pages to find out. If page 5 was about gum disease, though, I would then have added it to the gum disease sub and removed it from the main heading line. I'm not sure whether I've answered your question. Cheers, Carol Roberts, indexer and copy editor | Life is good. Carol.Roberts@mixcom.com | Milwaukee, WI | ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 16:13:48 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: JPerlman@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Not left-handed Carol, Deborah, I'm game. Not too heavy to carry a recorder! We'd probably get thrown out of the hotel, though! Janet ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 16:55:01 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: JanCW@AOL.COM Subject: liability summary and EINs Thanks for all the input! Wow! Glad you all shared what you thought. I think we can summarize the discussion with this: Liability insurance is not something indexers need unless they are working on a nuclear power plant operating manual, or something so critical and devastating that the world will come to an end if you get one See Reference too many in your index. However, EINs may be a good thing to have, especially if you are dealing with software companies (and others) who fear scrutiny by the IRS and have heard of the recent class action suit ruling against Microsoft regarding independent contractors. Sounds like there's no negative side to having one, so I'm going to go ahead and do it. By the way, you can find form SS-4 for requesting an EIN online at www.fedworld.gov in the IRS file libraries or you can call 1-800-829-1040 to request a form. Jan (now back to business and hold the paperwork until later) Wright ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 17:03:00 PDT Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Lindley, Alison" Subject: indexes on the web Hello, I am a new subscriber to this list in addition to being new to indexing (although I did just get my MLS). Presently, I am compiling an index of a monthly trade magazine for the association I work for. In the past it has been published in the January issue of each year. I have suggested putting this year's index on our home page, which brings me to my question. Can anyone point me to some web sites with indexes similar to the one I have described? Or have any of you done an index on the web? I know HTML, but have never attempted such a large project. The index will probably have around 500 entries once it is finished. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Alison lindley@loma.org ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 17:49:38 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: John Howe Subject: Re: indexes on the web --part_AE8C223200073B6300000001 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Disposition: Inline > Hello, > > I am a new subscriber to this list in addition to being new to > indexing (although I did just get my MLS). Presently, I am compiling > an index of a monthly trade magazine for the association I work for. > In the past it has been published in the January issue of each year. > I have suggested putting this year's index on our home page, which > brings me to my question. Can anyone point me to some web sites > with indexes similar to the one I have described? Or have any of you > done an index on the web? I know HTML, but have never attempted such > a large project. The index will probably have around 500 entries once > it is finished. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. > > Thanks, > > Alison > lindley@loma.org > Alison, Check out the annual index for IEEE Spectrum, the monthly membership magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers at http:// www.spectrum.ieee.org --part_AE8C223200073B6300000001 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Disposition: Inline John Howe, CEP Managing Editor 345 E. 47th St. New York, NY 10017 Voice: (212) 705-7334 Fax: (212) 705-7812 e-mail: johnh@aiche.org --part_AE8C223200073B6300000001-- ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 17:54:29 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Barbara Stroup Subject: recorders, left-handed Janet, Carol, Deborah - I'll bring my instruments too - how about some quartets? Barbara Stroup ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 16:24:34 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Victoria Baker Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks At 09:29 AM 10/17/96 -0700, Elinor wrote: >Victoria, > I never learned proper "vocabulary control," and other things I presume >are taught in library school, Actually, I learned that in Nancy Mulvany's class at UC Berkeley Extension and through the law indexing mentor program I was once in. >but I have faced the same predicament in >indexing, when a glossary term is different from the heading I had chosen. >If there is any conceivable difference between the terms, as there is in >your example, I don't mind seeing them both. > >> Heterosexism, 588. *See* Heterosexual bias >> Heterosexual bias, 170-171, 588-589 > >I think of "heterosexism" as a general pattern of feelings, whereas I see >"heterosexual bias" as an actual behavior. I too think there is a shade of difference, but see below: >One question, though (and forgive me if I'm ignorant of the proper rule): >Is there a reason why you used a "See" rather than a "See also" reference? I realized from something Lynn also said that I had not been clear on the problem here. BOTH entries were defined by the authors as glossary entries, and the authors explicitly defined heterosexism as an alternate to heterosexual bias, with heterosexual bias the term they actually used in the book. Vocabulary control means choosing a single term in the index when synonyms are used in the book, as well as synonyms a user might look up. I therefore used the *See* reference, since it is the reference properly used for vocabulary control--it doesn't indicate additional or related information, it indicates that what is desired lies elsewhere. Which is why I described this as a similar but not identical example of what Lynn was referring to. To get back to the problem of glossary (vocabulary) terms being different from a main entry with subentries, I do it because the wrong form of a word is impossible to make subentries read back to, and because in an index containing these glossary entries it is really obvious Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 20:44:39 +0000 From: BITNET list server at BINGVMB (1.8a) Subject: File: "INDEX-L LOG9610C" To: Julius Ariail when a word is in the index solely for that reason. With respect to the book (on human sexuality) my example was drawn from, the authors used a lot of similar terms and synonyms so that students would be acquainted with the range of such terms they might encounter in the real world, and how they were interrelated. The authors would use these similar terms slightly differently, but then go on to define them as essentially equal. This happened throughout. Also, one of the functions of the book was to show the many ways bias influences lives, so there is a "Bias" main entry. The authors' choice of preferred terms in these areas reflected their desire to tie in bias as the key concept. --Victoria ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 17:06:29 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Elinor Lindheimer Subject: Re: Bold coming thru on e-mail Wildefire@AOL.COM wrote: >Not only did your bold and italics come through on your own posts, but the >bold came through again when Elinor quoted your original message in her reply >to what you said about heterosexism vs. heterosexual bias. :-) IMHO, once the >generic codes you mentioned are embedded, they stay there and mailreaders >capable of detecting/displaying them display them again. I find it fascinating that the boldface coding came through when I quoted Victoria in my reply, since all I ever saw in Eudora was an asterisk on each side of the term I presumed was bold. I hear that Netscape will be bringing out a version that has graphics-intensive email. I presume that will mean we can use accent marks too!! And sending index files will be simpler, I hope. Sending a file from one AOL subscriber to another, or from one CompuServe subscriber to another, is easy. But notwithstanding Mime or BinHex or other compatibilities, I have had mixed success when sending an index as an attachment with Eudora. Elinor Lindheimer elinorl@mcn.org Elinor ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 17:06:35 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Elinor Lindheimer Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks Thanks to Victoria for the clarification on vocabulary control, and now I see why you used a "See" rather than a "See also" reference. >> Heterosexism, 588. *See* Heterosexual bias >> Heterosexual bias, 170-171, 588-589 Since both terms were defined by the authors as glossary entries, yet heterosexual bias was the preferred term in the book, we have here an example of editing breakdown. The "heterosexism" in the glossary should have been a cross reference as well. There are so many times when I wish the publishers would leave time at the end of the indexing process to go back and fix the editing...although sometimes it's beyond fixing. Ah, well-edited books are so much easier to index!!! Elinor Lindheimer elinorl@mcn.org ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 21:34:37 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: GVHatch@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Bold coming thru on e-mail Okay, Lynn, here's something weird. I have AOL 3.0. I received Victoria's bold and italic just fine, but I did not see the bold etc. that you sent. Why would that be? Just curious. Gaylene Hatch ================================================================= ======== Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 23:21:05 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Jillbarret@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Bold coming thru on e-mail Victoria, I got both the bold and italics...looks neat! Let me try it! BOLD ITALICS Did I get it right? What if I use the tools in the new version of AOL to select and highlight for bold and italics, and underline. Do the typefaces come through this way too? I've been wanting to know who can get them. bold italics underline Jill Jill Barrett Indexing Services Newport News, VA ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 02:10:33 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Bold coming thru on e-mail In a message dated 96-10-17 15:21:24 EDT, Deborah wrote: > > Not! > > Sorry Lynn, It doesn't work every time. And even though I'm on AOL too, > there's no blue, no bold, just plain text. Running your message through the > Index-L system sometimes removes all of the formatting. Well, that's one theory that went down in flames. (None of it came through on the copy echoed back to me neither.) Apropos (well sort of) of this topic about stuff not coming through over the Net, I'm appending the following joke I just received. And folks, I promise not to spend any more bandwidth on this. (I hope it'll make you laugh too hard to aim a flamethrower. ;-D) ****************************** One of Microsoft's finest techs was drafted and sent to boot camp. At the rifle range, he was given some instruction, a rifle, and bullets. He fired several shots at the target. The report came from the target area that all attempts had completely missed the target. The Microsoft tech looked at his rifle and then at the target again. He looked at the rifle again, and then at the target again. He put his finger over the end of the rifle barrel and squeezed the trigger with his other hand. The end of his finger was blown off, whereupon he yelled toward the target area: "It's leaving here just fine. The trouble must be at your end!" ************************************************ Now returning your screen to our regularly scheduled program... Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 02:10:33 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Unanalyzed locators after main entries with subs In a message dated 96-10-17 15:34:40 EDT, Carol wrote: (quoting me) > > >b) passages where the subject is discussed very broadly that the unanalyzed > > locators are used instead of a subentry saying "described"; then said: > > Not sure I understand this one. Carol, I meant passages where the main gist of a topic is discussed, often in many aspects (too many aspects to encapsulate in a subentry narrower in scope than the term "described" or "description"). Instead of creating a subentry "described", the locator for the passage is simply tacked onto the main heading. > > > Typically, if I have an entry in my index that looks like this: > > cats, 1, 5, 7 > breeds of, 8-9, 10, 22 > gum disease in, 2-4, 8, 18 > > (is this the situation you have in mind, Lynn?), it's because the passages > on pp. 1, 5, 7 are one-shot deals. They have nothing in common except being > about cats. When users look at this, I expect them to think simply that > there's some additional info about cats on those three pages, but they'll > have to look there to see just what it is. If they're wondering whether > there's anything in the book about, say, how to clip a cat's claws, they'll > have to look on (only) three pages to find out. If page 5 was about gum > disease, though, I would then have added it to the gum disease sub and > removed it from the main heading line. That is the situation I had in mind. Now that brings up an interesting issue. They're not passing references, which neither of us index anyway. So, are you saying that you spin them out into subentries only when there are multiple locators for them? Believe me, I'm not at all implying any criticism by asking! (I say this again because apparently one person felt I considered the practice unprofessional or unusual, despite my having said in my original post that I'm asking simply out of curiosity about something I've *frequently* seen.) By hearing folks say *why* they do this (which is something that I don't do myself), I just may learn something from them in the process. I'm always willing to re-examine my own methods in light of what other indexers are doing and hearing *why* they do it. > > I'm not sure whether I've answered your question. Yes, you have (if I understood you correctly) and many thanks! Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 05:20:05 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks In a message dated 96-10-17 02:09:34 EDT, you write: > I think I'd put these words in `quotes' - my gut feeling is that it's > possible to get away with non-standard indexing terms by doing that. I'd > feel that italics or bold might draw unnecessary attention to these > terms. However, I'm not *absolutely* sure just what kind of terms are > being referred to. Can we have some examples? Drusilla, You have an excellent point about placing them in quotes vs. bold or italics. The only drawback, a very slight one, would be having to force the sort order for each one because of the quotes. (This is getting better all the time, IMHO. ;-D) The types of terms I'm referring to are set to the left or right of the text column and have definitions (which is why I called them "vocabulary" words, even though there aren't actual vocabulary lists at the ends of the chapters). Here are examples of non-noun "vocabulary" words I've encountered: bipedally (which I recast as "bipedal locomotion" before starting this thread) ethnocentric (which could be recast as "ethnocentrism") complementary (if recast, would have to be recast as "complementary base pairs" in this particular case) diploid (ditto--"diploid cells") hemizygous (things are starting to get a bit gnarly here... "hemizygous genotype/phenotype/trait?", the same applying to "homozygous" and "heterozygous"--to come up with the best one would take a bit of thought) racial (duh... any noun tacked on here could limit the scope too much because it could apply to too many things) Having heard the wonderful feedback here, I'm definitely going to start indexing them as they appear in the text. Even when I am able to recast them as nouns, I'm uncomfortable because of the possibility of distorting the author's meaning, however slightly. I'll talk with the client about whether they prefer any particular typography for these terms, just to be on the safe side. Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 05:20:29 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Bold coming thru on e-mail In a message dated 96-10-18 01:46:26 EDT, Gaylene wrote: > Okay, Lynn, here's something weird. I have AOL 3.0. I received Victoria's > bold and italic just fine, but I did not see the bold etc. that you sent. > Why would that be? Just curious. > > Gaylene Hatch Gaylene, Even though I promised I wouldn't devote anymore bandwidth to this, I can't resist. ;-D Victoria used generic coding, the Chicago variant, to produce her formatting, whereas I simply used the pushbuttons in AOL's mailreader to format the words I highlighted. So, this suggests that AOL's software does not automatically embed the generic codes when you use the formatting buttons, but uses some other technique that seems to work only within AOL (but yet can respond to the codes). Otherwise, you and I should have seen the formatting appear in my previous post, which it didn't. (Actually, this doesn't seem to be a totally logical hypothesis either.) However, Victoria's formatting survived her posting her message to the list, my forwarding her post to her, and her including her original post in her reply to my forwarding message. Now, being that you also have version 3.0, I'm very glad to hear thatyou also saw the formatting in Victoria's posts, else I'd be wondering if I've gone totally around the bend and seeing things that aren't really there!!!!!!! ;-D BTW, I've embedded Chicago codes in the last sentence of the above paragraph as yet another test. We may have stumbled on an undocumented feature (this time not a bug) of AOL's mailreader or else we have a realllllly strange mystery on our hands (even stranger than the fact that Victoria posted the codes totally by accident--apparently they were embedded in her index and, apparently, she simply copied an excerpt from it, codes and all, when she posted her message). Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 07:45:30 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hazel Blumberg-McKee Subject: Independent contractors FWIW, the problem in the Microsoft case was that the so-called "independent contractors" were actually doing their work at Microsoft and not at their own homes. The "independent contractors" were sitting in Microsoft cubicles, using Microsoft equipment. Such a situation would *definitely* make the IRS sit up and take notice. ;-) Also, regarding liability insurance: I wonder if there's anything in the laws of the state or province in which the potential client is located that makes him or her want independent contractors to acquire such insurance. Is there anything in your state's or province's laws about liability insurance? Maybe that's one of the reasons the potential client is so concerned. Yeah, I know that Shakespeare said, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" (we all wore those t-shirts with that legend emblazoned on them in law school). But before we blame lawyers for many of our woes (and heaven knows, there are plenty of sleazy lawyers), let's realize that there are other reasons why courts have come up with the decisions they have. Let's also realize that state legislatures, not necessarily made up of lawyers, come up with laws. And let's further realize that, as they said in law school, decisions are often made based on what the judge had for breakfast. Hazel (nonpracticing attorney--by choice and not by disbarment!) Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) "I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers."--Anonymous ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 07:58:46 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Cynthia D. Bertelsen" Subject: Re: Unanalyzed locators after main entries with subs Before I get into unanalyzed page locators after main headings with subheads, I did want to mention that it might not be a bad idea to have copies of the indexing standards (British Standards and American standards through the National Information Standards Organization) lying around to check from time to time on these sorts of questions. See Wellisch, Indexing from A to Z (p. 446-51), on standards; he includes contact information for the appropriate organizations. On unanalyzed page locators: I have given some thought to unanalyzed page locators in relation to my own use of them and it appears that these locators usually refer to: 1) general information that covers several aspects of a subject (and often over a range of several pages) and 2) information about a subject that doesn't really merit a subhead because, as Carol Roberts said, it is a one-shot deal. To take that further, I would like to add that in general these one-shot deals, for me, might be that the subject is a name included in a listing of people who were on a committee, with no other real information given. (Like, in a simplistic fictitious example made up on the spot, "In response to the protests, the President created a committee to look into the problem and appointed Dulles, Acheson, and Welles to serve on the committee. Two months later the committee reported that the protests originated with the XYZ group." The committee is never mentioned again, the people (who are important figures in the overall theme of the book) were on only one committee (otherwise you might have a subhead under the person's name like "committee memberships of" or some such thing), etc.) Granted, you could put in a subhead with the name of the committee, but it is not of major importance, since it was not a policy-making committee nor did it generate any more discussion in the book. It could be that some would argue that this sort of example is really about passing mentions, but there IS some information there for the reader, showing the activities of the personages in question. ************ Cynthia D. Bertelsen INDEXER Blacksburg, VA cbertel@nrv.net http://www.vt.edu:10021/B/bertel/ndx.html ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 13:14:00 BST-1 Reply-To: hcalvert@cix.compulink.co.uk Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hilary Calvert Subject: Re: Unanalyzed locators after main entries with subs This isn't quite the same, but is a related problem - what do you do when there is a whole section on a subject which includes some of the subjects you have chosen for subheadings? e.g. you have a section on cats from page 3-11. This includes a few items of interest on Persian cats and Burmese cats. But you also have subheadings under `cats' for Persian cats and Burmese cats - which have references in other parts of the book. Do you add the page numbers from the 3-11 section to the subheadings (e.g. cats, Persian 4-5, 13, 18), or expect people to read the section on cats 3-11 anyway and therefore miss out 4-5 after cats, Persian? ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 06:02:36 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Victoria Baker Subject: Re: Subentry order, scholarly Dear All, Thank you for your responses to my query about alphabetic vs. page number order for subentries. I really needed to know if that was ever really done except in biography or history. This is the outcome of my problem: I told the author about what the guidelines called for and his response was that it should be alpha order. Also, his previous book for the same publisher had the subentries in alpha order. He said he would check in with his editor about it, but it turns out he decided not to check in with his editor because he doesn't care to have his index in page number order. I decided early on that I would not talk to the editor myself, because the author had hired me, explicitly because I was willing to work with him on the index, and he had a strong preference for alpha order. I concluded that it was not my place to talk to the press on this particular book--if the press had hired me, I would have. I can't make my mind like the idea of page number order--true chronological order is the only way a non-alpha order makes sense to me. At any rate, definitely for the book I'm indexing, the page number order would render the index unusable, because it is a book of critical perspective essays in anthropology. It also seems to me that page number order presupposes the user has read the book cover to cover, which isn't always the case, as I know we're all aware. Again, I am grateful for your input. Thank you. Victoria ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 06:20:27 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Victoria Baker Subject: Re: Bold coming thru on e-mail Lynn wrote: >(even stranger than the fact that Victoria posted the >codes totally by accident--apparently they were embedded in her index and, >apparently, she simply copied an excerpt from it, codes and all, when she >posted her message). Just to clarify, I used the generic codes specifically to indicate bold in what I thought would be a universally-decipherable way on those sample entries I typed in, never dreaming they would actually be translated by AOL. I'm too lazy to go into a file for two lines of type. --Victoria ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 09:19:56 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Richard T. Evans" Subject: Re: Independent contractors At 07:45 AM 10/18/96 -0400, you wrote: >FWIW, the problem in the Microsoft case was that the so-called >"independent contractors" were actually doing their work at Microsoft and >not at their own homes. The "independent contractors" were sitting in >Microsoft cubicles, using Microsoft equipment. Such a situation would >*definitely* make the IRS sit up and take notice. ;-) That in and of itself is not cause for the IRS to notice. Before I started freelancing as an indexer I did contract technical writing and always worked on the client site. It is not so much a matter of *where* you work as *how* you work. The IRS has a list of rules that it uses to examine the working relationship between the client and the contractor. I don't remember all of it, but a couple of items were: - Client may tell the contractor what needs to be done but may not given instruction in how to do it. - Client may not give contractor performance appraisals. Dick Evans ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 06:03:13 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Victoria Baker Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks Elinor wrote: >>> Heterosexism, 588. *See* Heterosexual bias >>> Heterosexual bias, 170-171, 588-589 > >Since both terms were defined by the authors as glossary entries, yet >heterosexual bias was the preferred term in the book, we have here an >example of editing breakdown. The "heterosexism" in the glossary should have >been a cross reference as well. Yes, in fact heterosexism was cross-referenced to heterosexual bias in the glossary proper. This publisher has asked me to provide a bold page number for every bold faced (and therefore glossary or vocabulary) term from the text, and some of the books have margin definitions instead of a glossary, which is where the bold locators are especially useful. Margin definitions don't have cross references because they are scattered throughout the book, of course. This is what I mean about publisher's rules pushing the envelope of indexing technique. I'm finding the occurrence of an explicit definition of a synonym to have begun looking like a good reason to use the cite as per heterosexism, above, even though I anguished about it when I initially realized its necessity. I have seen this done elsewhere; we know, however, that this does not guarantee its usefulness. What do people think? Thanks for the thought-provoking comments. Best--Victoria ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 10:49:40 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Task-oriented indexing (Was: Re: Unanalyzed locators...) In a message dated 96-10-17 12:52:24 EDT, Elinor wrote: > Lynn wrote: > > [A]...technique I use in all types of computer books is listing > >specific commands when necessary/appropriate under headings defining the > type > >of task the user wants to perform. My theory is that the reader has some > task > >(or programming issue) in mind, even if they don't know what command (or > >toolbar button) is applicable. ;-D > > This is what is called "task-oriented indexing," and it's extremely useful > to the reader. For example, imagine looking up "search and replace" and > finding nothing, because it's all under the "Find" command. The term > "searching" or something similar must be in the index, either with double > posting or as a cross reference. Elinor, How neat that this technique has an actual name (which suggests that there may be a whole body of techniques associated with it)! :-D If you, or anyone else here, knows of anything published on that subject, I'd appreciate hearing about it. > > The only problem I run into is when the task and the command have the same > or a similar name. In those cases, I generally use the command name. I do the same unless there are additional methods for accomplishing a given task other than issuing the specific command of the same/similar name. In those instances, I index both to allow for subentries that pertain to one or another, but not both. > > In task-oriented indexing the gerund is often the most logical grammatical > form to use, by the way. Indeed. In fact, the gerund is often referred to as the "noun" form of a verb, am I right? However, even using the task-oriented method, I also create main entries for the object of the verb; e.g.: deleting, files files, deleting to account for those who, when performing a task think more in terms of the object being acted upon vs. the action to be performed on the object. When using the index to a manual, I am equally as likely to look for a gerund entry as I am to look for an "object" entry and vice versa. What determines this? Maybe whether the current month has an "r" in its name, I don't know. ;-D There have been occasions when I've had to severely cut an index because of tight space (e.g., 800+ pp books on extremely technical subjects with only 10pp allowed for the index!). In those instances, the gerund entries are deleted because I'm secure in the assumption that, not finding the gerund, the user will look for the "object" entry and find the gerund as a subentry. Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 10:49:46 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks In a message dated 96-10-17 13:18:24 EDT, Angela wrote: > I've never thought that using only nouns as main headings was a "rule", but > that it was > only one option for the style of an index. Just as the style of the index > could be that all > main headings are capitalized and all subheadings are not (except for proper > nouns), > you could have the style where all main headings must be nouns. So if you > have the > kind of index that warrants using other kinds of words as main headings (and > it sounds > like you do), it is best to pick a different style. Angela, To be honest with you, I had always taken it to be a "rule" and not an "option" that index headings are nouns (elasticizing "noun" to include gerunds). IMHO, parts of speech used as index headings directly affect the content/structure of the index itself. OTOH, headings that are in all caps, initial caps, etc. are, IMHO, options, as these are merely formats. I wish that I could remember where I've seen it written that adjectives and adverbs are *not* to be used as headings, but I've seen it somewhere and probably more than once. > > One thing I learned about audience as a tech writer, is that if your > audience is closer to > a beginner's level, they are more likely to look up verbs than nouns. But > that may just > stem from the fact that we write beginning-level manuals much more > task-oriented than > feature-oriented, so the whole "feel" of the manual is more verb-like. So > for a beginning > audience, I'll have entries for both "creating tables" and "tables, > creating", but for a more > advanced audience, I'll just have "tables, creating". See also my post on task-oriented indexing. I haven't used audience level as a criterion for whether to use gerunds because I've used them in some advanced programming texts as well as in beginner's manuals. For example, most of my programming manual indexes contain the headings "declaring" and "initializing". (I think an experienced programmer may be just as likely to look under "declaring" as under "variables" or other things that are "declared".) The main criterion that I use for deciding whether to use a gerund is how likely is it that an index user will look under that specific term. For example, I'll almost always use creating, deleting, editing (and/or changing), and searching (and others depending on the book). However, I never use "using" (which I've actually seen in an index to a software manual, yet *what* is being used did not appear as a main entry! ;-D) or gerunds that have such a wide range of synonyms that the resulting cross-reference web or number of multiple postings would become a tangled snarl. > > I guess the bottom line is to consider the audience. It's most important to > index the way > they are likely to look it up, and if that breaks the style of index, maybe > a different style > is in order. Even if the noun-only thing is a "rule", I think it is better > to bend the rules in the > name of usability than it is to contort the entries to fit the rule and > thereby make the index > less usable. I agree. Vocabulary/glossary terms should be an exception to the "noun rule". However, even when recasting non-noun forms as nouns, they fall in the same place in the index (or adjacent to it) as they would have if indexed exactly as they appear in the text. They end up where the reader is likely to look for them. So, the only real "usability" issue, IMHO, is the potential, subtle, distortion of meaning that I mentioned in my response to Drusilla--and that's indeed an important issue. An almost parallel issue arises rather often in some computer books (especially programming books). The author makes reference to a language or interface component by name, but without identifying exactly what it is (and it's not clear from the context). It's not very helpful to index users to find an entry for Foo if they don't know if Foo is a toolbar button, a menu command, a dialog box, etc., especially when scanning the index with only a vague memory or idea of what they're looking for. (I know people do this because I've scanned indexes this way myself, hoping to finally stumble on the entry I need.) And, sometimes, different components will have the same name. (Statements and functions are an example, made worse by the fact that occasionally someone goofed and left the parentheses off the end of the function name). In those situations, Foo is, in a way, an adjective (despite technically being the name of something) and I can't tell you how often I've flipped back and forth or dug through lines of code trying to figure out what Foo is so I can tack a noun after it. Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 11:10:13 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Locatelli@AOL.COM Subject: Re: early index Ann, You can pass this along to those on the other list. I work at the Newberry Library in Chicago and have seen alphabetical indexes in ecclesiastical books as early as 1543. Fred Leise "Between the Lines" Indexing and Editorial Services Manager, The Newberry Consort ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 10:24:20 -0600 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Carol Roberts Subject: I am embarrassed I am SO terribly sorry and embarrassed about posting on Index-L what was obviously a personal message to a particular subgroup! I just hate it when I do that. Please forgive me. With very red face, Carol Roberts, indexer and copy editor | Life is good. Carol.Roberts@mixcom.com | Milwaukee, WI | ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 08:30:44 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Carolyn G. Weaver" Subject: Re: Bold coming thru on e-mail In-Reply-To: <199610181017.DAA14411@mx4.u.washington.edu> It's the _recipient_ system and your personal setup that determines whether or not you receive the formatting. I'm using Pine, and it does not support onscreen display of italic, bold, etc. Carolyn Weaver On Fri, 18 Oct 1996 Wildefire@AOL.COM wrote: > In a message dated 96-10-18 01:46:26 EDT, Gaylene wrote: > > > Okay, Lynn, here's something weird. I have AOL 3.0. I received Victoria's > > bold and italic just fine, but I did not see the bold etc. that you sent. > > Why would that be? Just curious. > > > > Gaylene Hatch > > Gaylene, > > Even though I promised I wouldn't devote anymore bandwidth to this, I can't > resist. > ;-D > > Victoria used generic coding, the Chicago variant, to produce her formatting, > whereas I simply used the pushbuttons in AOL's mailreader to format the words > I highlighted. So, this suggests that AOL's software does not automatically > embed the generic codes when you use the formatting buttons, but uses some > other technique that seems to work only within AOL (but yet can respond to > the codes). Otherwise, you and I should have seen the formatting appear in my > previous post, which it didn't. (Actually, this doesn't seem to be a totally > logical hypothesis either.) However, Victoria's formatting survived her > posting her message to the list, my forwarding her post to her, and her > including her original post in her reply to my forwarding message. Now, being > that you also have version 3.0, I'm very glad to hear thatyou > also saw the formatting in Victoria's posts, else I'd be wondering if I've > gone totally around the bend and seeing things that aren't really > there!!!!!!! ;-D > > BTW, I've embedded Chicago codes in the last sentence of the above paragraph > as yet another test. We may have stumbled on an undocumented feature (this > time not a bug) of AOL's mailreader or else we have a realllllly strange > mystery on our hands (even stranger than the fact that Victoria posted the > codes totally by accident--apparently they were embedded in her index and, > apparently, she simply copied an excerpt from it, codes and all, when she > posted her message). > > Lynn Moncrief > TECHindex & Docs > Technical and Scientific Indexing > ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 08:34:45 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Jonathan Sachs Subject: Re: Independent contractors A couple of clarifications here. >FWIW, the problem in the Microsoft case was that the so-called >"independent contractors" were actually doing their work at Microsoft and >not at their own homes. The "independent contractors" were sitting in >Microsoft cubicles, using Microsoft equipment. Such a situation would >*definitely* make the IRS sit up and take notice. ;-) The IRS uses several criteria (nine, I think) to distinguish an employee from an independent contractor. Doing work at the client/employer's site is just one of these. Of course there are many situations where work HAS to be done on site, either because it requires equipment that is too big, expensive, or rare to move, or because it requires continual interaction with others. This is probably not the case in indexing, but in my primary field of technical writing, it often is. Second, the problem is not "the lawyers," good or bad, but the whole legal system, of which lawyers, courts, regulatory agencies, and legislatures are interlocking parts. That's what is so discouraging about this problem: no one is to responsible, so no one can fix it. --Jonathan Sachs, also a nonpracticing attorney by choice ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 11:37:34 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Locatelli@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks Lynn, Another option would be to identify those "vocabulary" words with a parenthetical phrase in the heading, such as: racial (vocabulary term), 137 Fred Leise "Between the Lines" Indexing and Editorial Services ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 11:40:42 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: JanCW@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Independent contractors In a message dated 96-10-18 07:52:11 EDT, you write: > FWIW, the problem in the Microsoft case was that the so-called > "independent contractors" were actually doing their work at Microsoft and > not at their own homes. The "independent contractors" were sitting in > Microsoft cubicles, using Microsoft equipment. Such a situation would > *definitely* make the IRS sit up and take notice. ;-) In some cases, the line gets so fuzzy it's hard to know what the IRS would think. In the past, when I wanted to do a contract mostly at home, and had the equipment and space to do it, it was made impossible due to the indexing tools the company insisted I use. These tools needed to be used onsite, as they connected to large server-based databases, and were single-user, so that I could not take the work offsite. So yes, I was an independent contractor sitting in their offices (they don't have cubicles - amazingly enough, it is almost all offices with doors!) and using their equipment. I guess it would cross the line of independent contractor to temp employee with the insistence on the tool. Being independent in the SS-8 form definitions means defining how the work will be done, and I could not define that totally in terms of tools on that type of project. Jan Wright ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 11:40:19 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Jennifer Rowe Subject: Re: Unanalyzed locators after main entries with subs Cynthia says: >I have given some thought to unanalyzed page locators in relation to my own >use of them and it appears that these locators usually refer to: >1) general information that covers several aspects of a subject (and often >over a range of several pages) This is the knottiest part of the problem for me. If all, or most, of the page locators in a group of subheadings come from the same range of pages, it seems useful to me to include the range after the main entry, for readers seeking any information the book has about cats and not wanting to look up several subheads separately (though, of course, if they look up one subhead they'll probably find the rest of the nearby information too). This would look like, to use Drusilla's example: Cats, 1-10 Burmese, 2-4 Manx, 4-6 Siamese, 9-10 Tabby, 27 But at what point does the general listing become simply a repetition of the information in the subheadings? It shouldn't be: Cats, 1-10, 27 Subs as above If the information about cats is scattered throughout the book and there is no section of several pages on cats, then any page locators listed after the main entry "cats" would be only the one-shot deals, as Cynthia says. Hope I've made myself clear. This is an interesting thread. I'm surprised to find so many different opinions on a real nuts-and-bolts matter, one that must come up in almost any index. Jenny Rowe ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 12:10:56 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hazel Blumberg-McKee Subject: Adjectives as main heads >From Nancy Mulvany's _Indexing Books_, page 71: "Main headings are often nouns, or nouns preceded by an adjective. A main heading should never be composed of an adjective or adverb standing alone. The structure of the following entry is not correct: "public affairs policy, 56 health, 33 information services, 43 speaking, 98 "These subentries. . . are not related to each other. They have been forced into a hierarchical relationship based on the adjective _public_." Hazel Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) "I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers."--Anonymous ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 09:13:57 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Elinor Lindheimer Subject: Re: Unanalyzed locators after main entries with subs At 01:14 PM 10/18/96 BST-1, Hilary Calvert wrote: >This isn't quite the same, but is a related problem - what do you do when >there is a whole section on a subject which includes some of the subjects >you have chosen for subheadings? e.g. you have a section on cats from >page 3-11. This includes a few items of interest on Persian cats and >Burmese cats. But you also have subheadings under `cats' for Persian >cats and Burmese cats - which have references in other parts of the book. > Do you add the page numbers from the 3-11 section to the subheadings >(e.g. cats, Persian 4-5, 13, 18), or expect people to read the section on >cats 3-11 anyway and therefore miss out 4-5 after cats, Persian? Ah, Drusilla, I was thinking of bringing this up, so thank you! I would definitely include the relevant page numbers from the main heading's page range in the subheading. To my mind, that reinforces the fact that the page range after the main heading is a general discussion, and further helps the reader locate the particular information he or she is looking for. Elinor Lindheimer elinorl@mcn.org ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 12:03:07 -0600 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Carol Roberts Subject: Indexing a mess I've got a messy, complex indexing situation I could sure use some help with. It's become so complicated that I don't know how well I'll be able to describe this initially, but please bear with me. I'm about to index a newsletter for a marketing firm. The editor has marked up the newsletter somewhat, to indicate what she thinks is important, but as is often the case, she's marked a bunch of words I can't possibly use as keywords, because they're hopelessly broad (words like "change"). OK, I'm prepared to ignore many of those suggestions. She is also trying to encourage her clientele to use a certain controlled vocabulary, and so she wants me to include those vocab. words and index the newsletter articles under the appropriate terms. She's even indicated, for each article, which vocab. words apply. So far so good. Here comes the messy part. The vocab. words are part of a highly hierarchical system. So, for example, if a particular article has to do with on-line data access, on her system, it would be indexed something like this: technology computing technology data access decision support systems on-line/real-time "On-line, On-time and In the Money" [sic] This is obviously a ridiculous way of indexing anything. Her idea is that she wants her readers to be able to locate the article within the hierarchy, which will be supplied to them. Of course, she's perfectly willing to have me do a lot of double-posting, so that readers who aren't privy to the hierarchical system (only a portion of her clientele will be) Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 20:44:39 +0000 From: BITNET list server at BINGVMB (1.8a) Subject: File: "INDEX-L LOG9610C" To: Julius Ariail can look things up, too. That suggests that I'd have to list this one article at least 5 times. The only alternative I've thought of so far that respects her wish to cue some of her readers to which headings are part of the hierarchy would be to boldface (or italicize) main headings that are part of the hierarchy, but without actually incorporating the hierarchy in the index itself. So that entry would look like this (where * means begin/end boldface): *on-line/real-time systems* "On-line, On-time and In the Money" What I could do with the other terms is reserve categories like "technology" for articles that discuss technology in a general way (same thing for other broad categories) and add "see also specific technologies." Once I (with your help?) come up with a workable alternative, I would send the editor a small sample of each. She is quite clueless about indexing (not to mention editing and writing), I'm afraid, so she'll need to see just how unworkable her original vision was. I should add, on her behalf, that she's as sweet as pie and eager to learn (*and* willing to pay a good price). If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them. Cheers, Carol Roberts, indexer and copy editor | Life is good. Carol.Roberts@mixcom.com | Milwaukee, WI | ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 18:17:00 PDT Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Richard Wright-ARCHIVES Subject: En, Em and Born Indexers I can't resist trying to join two threads by pointing out that the cartoon on p3 of the Spring 96 Number [119] of 'Catalogue & Index' (publ by the UK Library Association) has a man on a psychiatrist's couch, with the psychiatrist saying "At what age did you first start to worry about the distinction between a dash and a hyphen?" Regards from the BBC - Richard ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 13:23:15 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Richard T. Evans" Subject: Re: Task-oriented indexing (Was: Re: Unanalyzed locators...) At 10:49 AM 10/18/96 -0400, you wrote: > >How neat that this technique has an actual name (which suggests that there >may be a whole body of techniques associated with it)! :-D If you, or anyone >else here, knows of anything published on that subject, I'd appreciate >hearing about it. > The concept of task-orientation in both indexes and technical writing dates at least to the early seventies. I have some internal-use manuals produced by IBM that describe the process for creating task-oriented manuals. There are probably books on the subject available to the general public. Task-orientation is one of the first things I look for in an index when I consider buying a book. For instance, I picked up a book about HTML and readily found an index entry for the tag but found nothing for the tasks that one might want to use the tag for. For instance: fonts, emphasizing text, boldfacing If I had been a user who did not already know HTML but wanted to know what tag I needed to emphasize text I would never have found it. Dick Evans ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 10:54:56 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Sonsie Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks At 05:20 AM 10/18/96 -0400, Wildefire@AOL.COM wrote: >Having heard the wonderful feedback here, I'm definitely going to start >indexing them as they appear in the text. Even when I am able to recast them >as nouns, I'm uncomfortable because of the possibility of distorting the >author's meaning, however slightly. I'll talk with the client about whether >they prefer any particular typography for these terms, just to be on the safe >side. Lynn,I've finally been forced into this position as well. And, as somebody earlier said, it's frequently a sign of poor editing, that the editor/publisher/author team didn't see the problem early on and tackle it then. My main concern, as yours is, is wondering if I've changed the author's meaning. IMO it goes beyond our scope to start rewriting vocabulary entries to make them tidy...especially if, in the rewriting, we are changing the meaning, however subtlely. =Sonsie= ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 10:55:25 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Elinor Lindheimer Subject: Re: Independent contractors I believe one of the criteria for being an independent contractor is deciding on your own hours of work. Elinor Lindheimer elinorl@mcn.org ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 14:33:49 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: JanCW@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Indexing a mess In a message dated 96-10-18 14:11:25 EDT, you write: > The only alternative I've thought of so far that respects her wish to cue > some of her readers to which headings are part of the hierarchy would be to > boldface (or italicize) main headings that are part of the hierarchy, but > without actually incorporating the hierarchy in the index itself. So that > entry would look like this (where * means begin/end boldface): > Is there any way you could have her confine the use of the hierarchy to a notation in each published article itself, so that your index would not have anything to do with it, and that if a reader really wanted to see how an article fit into it, they could find the article and look at the notation at the bottom? Or, could you provide a separate index that is solely based on the hierarchy, with each article listed once in its proper section? And then provide a good solid usable index as well? Just some ideas. Sounds to me like including all this stuff would be totally unworkable. Jan wright ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 14:48:28 EDT Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group Comments: Converted from OV/VM to RFC822 format by PUMP V2.2X From: NASEM020@SIVM.SI.EDU Subject: Re: Indexing a mess In-Reply-To: note of 10/18/96 13:10 The hierarchy your editor developed sounds and looks quite similar to the MeSH tree structures that NLM uses to group terms. If you want some imput on how the trees aid the searcher as well as the indexer, lemme know. I'd be happy to fill you in as best I can. ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 14:53:29 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hazel Blumberg-McKee Subject: Re: Independent contractors In-Reply-To: <199610181802.OAA17189@polaris.net> On Fri, 18 Oct 1996, Elinor Lindheimer wrote: > I believe one of the criteria for being an independent contractor is > deciding on your own hours of work. Dusk to dawn? Dawn to dusk? But only occasionally. :-) Hazel Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) "I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers."--Anonymous ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 15:42:14 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Richard T. Evans" Subject: Re: Independent contractors At 10:55 AM 10/18/96 -0700, you wrote: >I believe one of the criteria for being an independent contractor is >deciding on your own hours of work. Not on the last contracts I worked on. :-( Dick Evans ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 15:50:39 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks In a message dated 96-10-18 13:12:13 EDT, Fred wrote: > Another option would be to identify those "vocabulary" words with a > parenthetical phrase in the heading, such as: > > racial (vocabulary term), 137 Fred, Why, this is even better yet!!!!!! It has the advantages of a) not recasting these terms; b) not giving them undue importance by bolding or italics (in the vein that Drusilla was working with her suggested quotation marks); c) doesn't require consultation with the client (saving me yet another long distance phone call and the client's time); d) ensures that they would fall in the same place in the index that users would look for them (to address a concern expressed by Angela); e) indicates to the knowledgeable index user that the indexer didn't simply flout standard indexing practice (as Hazel described, providing a quote from Mulvany as industrial-strength support); f) allows index users to immediately home in on where the term is defined without having to scan a subentry list or read a headnote describing the typographical convention used... Thanks for a solution that is both user-friendly and indexer-friendly!!!!!! Amazing what such a group of fine minds, as the folks on this list, can come up with! Thanks to all of you! Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 15:50:43 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Bold coming thru on e-mail In a message dated 96-10-18 11:21:27 EDT, Victoria wrote: > Just to clarify, I used the generic codes specifically to indicate bold in > what I thought would be a universally-decipherable way on those sample > entries I typed in, never dreaming they would actually be translated by AOL. > I'm too lazy to go into a file for two lines of type. Victoria, Maybe I'm just a dreamer, but you may have accidently started something really big by doing that! (See my response to Carolyn.) At any rate, this remarkable coincidence has been a lot of fun. :-) Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 15:50:40 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Bold coming thru on e-mail In a message dated 96-10-18 12:44:53 EDT, Carolyn wrote: > It's the _recipient_ system and your personal setup that determines > whether or not you receive the formatting. I'm using Pine, and > it does not support onscreen display of italic, bold, etc. Carolyn, I agree and, so far, it seems that AOL's software is the only mailreader supporting this. (AOL doesn't even mention it in its online documentation.) However, the neat thing about this is that, being that the codes Victoria used are in the public domain, future versions of other mailreaders can incorporate the routines necessary to display the formatting (provided that everyone can settle on which flavor of SGML to use, Victoria having used the Chicago variant which, astoundingly, worked). We Index-ellers may have stumbled, in a pure stroke of serendipity, on a potential new Internet technology (especially if the right folks are following this thread). Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 16:39:18 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Victoria Baker Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks >In a message dated 96-10-18 13:12:13 EDT, Fred wrote: > >> Another option would be to identify those "vocabulary" words with a >> parenthetical phrase in the heading, such as: >> >> racial (vocabulary term), 137 I guess I prefer the symmetry that simply using a bold reference locator adds. The vocabulary terms are bold in the text, the locator for that instance of the term is in bold. Seems fairly simple to me, whereas the addition of the parenthetical phrase seems cluttering. ================================================================= ======== Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 20:54:35 -0500 Reply-To: jspool@uie.com Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "Jared M. 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Contact the Andover Marriott (508-975-3600) before October 25th to reserve your room. ____________ To Register By Phone: (508) 975-4343 By Mail: User Interface Engineering 800 Turnpike Street, #101 North Andover, MA 01845 By Fax: (508) 975-5353 By Email: Courses@uie.com ___________ Order Form ___ Yes! I can't wait to attend Product Usability For Documentation Professionals in Andover, MA on November 12th & 13th, 1996 -- $620.00 per person or $545.00 each for 4 or more. I understand that if I register before October 25th, I will receive a full year's subscription to Eye For Design. ___ Maybe. I'd like to see the eight-page brochure which describes the details of this course. Please fax it to the number below. ___ No, I can't attend this course. But I am interested in hearing about future events. 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All cancellations must be made in writing. ================================================================= ======== Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 10:53:37 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Richard T. Evans" Subject: Re: Independent contractors At 07:01 PM 10/18/96 -0400, you wrote: >Sorry to run off at the fingers ... Running off at the fingers! I love it. Dick ================================================================= ======== Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 12:36:45 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Jim Mancall Subject: Opera Titles In-Reply-To: <9610191455.AA04355@is.nyu.edu> Hi everyone: I need some advice on indexing the titles of operas. My indexing resources aren't very specific on this issue, and I don't know what the title should look like in an index. This is what I am imagining: Title (opera or opus number) (composer's last name) For example: _Ballade_ (op. 24) (Grieg), 8, 18 Does anyone out there have ideas on this? And what about specific movements within an opera? Are they indexed in quotations? Thanks in advance, Jim Mancall ================================================================= ======== Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 14:18:24 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Richard T. Evans" Subject: Re: Bold coming thru on e-mail In a message dated 96-10-18 12:44:53 EDT, Carolyn wrote: > >> It's the _recipient_ system and your personal setup that determines >> whether or not you receive the formatting. I'm using Pine, and >> it does not support onscreen display of italic, bold, etc. > >Carolyn, > >I agree and, so far, it seems that AOL's software is the only mailreader >supporting this. The down side of this is that you can't correspond with anyone *about* HTML tags. Any tag you want to appear in your text gets translated. Last I knew, there was no way around this. Dick Evans ================================================================= ======== Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 15:16:06 +0000 Reply-To: norcross@ix.netcom.com Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Ann Norcross Organization: Crossover Information Services Subject: Re: Bold coming thru on e-mail Richard T. Evans wrote: > > In a message dated 96-10-18 12:44:53 EDT, Carolyn wrote: > > > >> It's the _recipient_ system and your personal setup that determines > >> whether or not you receive the formatting. I'm using Pine, and > >> it does not support onscreen display of italic, bold, etc. > > > >Carolyn, > > > >I agree and, so far, it seems that AOL's software is the only mailreader > >supporting this. > > The down side of this is that you can't correspond with anyone *about* HTML > tags. Any tag you want to appear in your text gets translated. Last I > knew, there was no way around this. > > Dick Evans I'm not sure what I need to change in my mail reader (Netscape 3.0 Gold), but just for the record I have not seen any formatted text in any of the messages on this thread! I'm just seeing the tags, an occasional asterisk, whatever. No bold, no italics. I have recevied entire Web pages and other HTML documents in the mail, and they all format perfectly with different fonts, graphics, etc. For some reason, the INDEX-L posts are not being formatted. Oh well. ================================================================= ======== Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 13:09:34 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Sonsie Subject: Re: En, Em and Born Indexers At 06:17 PM 10/18/96 PDT, Richard Wright-ARCHIVES wrote: >I can't resist trying to join two threads by pointing out that the cartoon >on p3 of the Spring 96 Number [119] of 'Catalogue & Index' (publ by the UK >Library Association) has a man on a psychiatrist's couch, with the >psychiatrist saying "At what age did you first start to worry about the >distinction between a dash and a hyphen?" >Regards from the BBC - Richard Oh, my! I simply howled at this one. Thanks for sharing! =Sonsie= ================================================================= ======== Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 18:03:34 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Helen Schinske Subject: vocab. words in index FWIW, I've just been reading Jo McMurtry's book _Victorian Life and Victorian Fiction: a Companion for the American Reader_ (Hamden, Conn.: Archon books, 1979) which has a glossary at the end and glossary words included in the index. One example is: "Instant," 271 which turns out to mean "The current calendar month" as in "I have received yours of the fourteenth instant." Other glossary-word entries have modifiers, such as "Guy" (slang), 271 which seems more useful ("slang" was not part of the glossary entry, but supplied by the indexer). Other words and phrases from the text (not the glossary) are sometimes indexed in quotation marks as well: "Esquire," use of, 33 "Going down to dinner," 252 These were fairly self-explanatory, though it might have been better to keep one notation for glossary words alone. What do people think of the usage "Eppie (Eliot)" in an index to mean Eppie, a character in George Eliot's _Silas Marner_? I think it is confusing, as if Eppie's last name might be Eliot, or Eppie be a nickname for some Eliot or other. It does save space, but "Eppie (in _Silas Marner_)" is not terribly long either. Helen Schinske HSchinske@aol.com ================================================================= ======== Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 18:48:01 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Barbara Stroup Subject: Re: Opera Titles Jim wrote about opera indexing: Jim - It depends on how extensively the segments of the opera are treated in the text. If there's a long discussion about an aria, a death scene, a vocal interpretation, I'd like to see it as a separate entry, of course. And I'd suggest that you be wary of using the word "movement" to discuss opera scores - I believe a better usage would be the theatrical vocabulary ("act, scene, overture"). Barbara Stroup Indexer ================================================================= ======== Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 20:07:54 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Ann Parrish Subject: Fwd: early indexes --------------------- Forwarded message: From: rgreene@CREDIT.ERIN.UTORONTO.CA (Richard Greene) Sender: C18-L@PSUVM.PSU.EDU (18th Century Interdisciplinary Discussion) Reply-to: C18-L@PSUVM.PSU.EDU (18th Century Interdisciplinary Discussion) To: C18-L@PSUVM.PSU.EDU (Multiple recipients of list C18-L) Date: 96-10-18 11:38:13 EDT Walter Ong in one of his books tells the amusing story of an early indexer who was so shocked at the wonder of what he had produced that he wrote at the end: "It is not I who have done this but the Holy Spirit working through me." Richard Greene University of Toronto ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 14:16:33 +1300 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Simon Cauchi Subject: Re: Opera Titles Jim Mancall writes: >Hi everyone: > >I need some advice on indexing the titles of operas. My indexing resources >aren't very specific on this issue, and I don't know what the title should >look like in an index. This is what I am imagining: > >Title (opera or opus number) (composer's last name) > >For example: > >_Ballade_ (op. 24) (Grieg), 8, 18 > >Does anyone out there have ideas on this? And what about specific >movements within an opera? Are they indexed in quotations? Jim, I wonder if you are using "opera" as the plural of "opus", i.e. to refer to a composer's "works" in general, not to musical drama. Grieg's "Ballade", if I understand the reference aright, is a piece for piano (the _Oxford Companion to Music_ mentions such a work by Grieg, but does not give its opus number). My own inclination would be to leave out the opus numbers unless they are absolutely necessary but otherwise to index the works as you suggest, with the title in italics and the composer's name in roman in parens after it: _Ballade_ (Grieg) _Mass in B minor_ (Bach) _Sonata in D minor_ (Shostakovich) Specific movements could be indexed in roman, thus: Adagio, _Oboe Concerto in C minor_ (Marcello) But you would do well to seek out some well-indexed work of musical literature and see how such problems have been solved by others. You don't say whether the book is written for experts or for the "general reader", nor whether it is all about music or perhaps includes one chapter on music together with other chapters on other topics. The approach you should adopt in the index will vary depending on the answers to such questions. >From Simon Cauchi, 13 Riverview Terrace, Hamilton, New Zealand Phone & fax +64 7 854 9229 e-mail cauchi@wave.co.nz ================================================================= ======== Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 21:18:28 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hazel Blumberg-McKee Subject: Fictional characters In-Reply-To: <199610192343.TAA12993@polaris.net> On Sat, 19 Oct 1996, Helen Schinske wrote: > What do people think of the usage "Eppie (Eliot)" in an index to mean Eppie, > a character in George Eliot's _Silas Marner_? When I first read that, I wondered who "Eppie Eliot" was. Seems awfully confusing to me. > It does save space, but "Eppie (in _Silas Marner_)" is not terribly > long either. I've used this style in indexes quite frequently, FWIW. Just my two cents. Hazel Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) "I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers."--Anonymous ================================================================= ======== Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 21:34:33 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hazel Blumberg-McKee Subject: Re: Opera Titles In-Reply-To: <199610200012.UAA18623@polaris.net> I was checking out CMS 14 on operas. Section 7.149 (page 288): "Titles of operas, oratorios, motets, tone poems, and other long musical compositions are italicized. Titles of songs and short compositions, as well as vocal pieces cited by their incipits (that is, their opening words) are usually set in roman types and quoted." However (same section and page): "[W]here many titles of musical compositions are mentioned in a critical study, all may be italicized regardless of individual length." Take a look at CMS 7.150 through 7.153 for information on such things as compositions that don't have distinctive titles (Symphony in B Major, for example); opus numbers; traditional musical forms used in titles of compositions; and descriptive titles that composers, critics, music historians, or the public may have given pieces. I certainly agree: If a particular aria in an opera gets a lot of treatment, you might well want to separate it out from the discussion of the opera itself. So, you might end up with _Magic Flute, The_ (Mozart). _See also_ "Queen of the Night" aria Hazel Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) "I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers."--Anonymous ================================================================= ======== Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 23:45:00 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: DStaub11@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Sublevel justification >WordenDex@AOL.COM wrote: >>When indexing a high school text, are two sublevels more than you think >>students can understand? >> Main entry >> Sub1a >> sub2a >> sub2a turnover >> sub2b-g >> Sub1b And Elinor wrote: >I think the only justification for sub-subheaadings is extremely dense >material, such as in legal or medical texts. In a high-school textbook, you >can find other ways to organize the index, especially if the columns aren't >very wide. As you surmised, turnovers of sub-subheadings can look extremely >awkward. I agree with Elinor. I never use sub-subs except in my extremely long and dense government document indexes. Instead I either: "scatter out" the references in subheading that's too long into other subheadings under the same main head (ie instead of China kinship systems, (15 page refs) China ancestor worship marriage etc (ie these could possibly have been combined into kinship but it's too long) or "break out" a long subheading and make it a main head, with a see also reference from the original main head. We had a discussion a while ago about whether, when doing this because the subhead has a long section of page references that needs to be broken down to leave the subhead in or not; Barb echoed my own thinking that I usually leave it in in a textbook and take it out in an academic book. Ie: Books textbooks, 15-30 becomes Books, see also Textbooks, and Textbooks, with subheads. As long as you're clearly sending the information to the reader, you're okay. I'm talking here about social sciences and humanities, though--my impression is that there are other conventions in medical, technical and science. True? Do Mi ================================================================= ======== Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 23:44:50 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: DStaub11@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Liability insurance and EIN Jan said a client wanted her to get an EIN. This happened to me with a school system I did a project for. I went ahead and got one but didn't use it on my taxes, since everybody else has my social security number (I've also been a sole proprietor for years). It made me really mad but I couldn't make a dent in their bureaucracy. It wasn't really that big a deal, anyway--I asked my tax consultant about it and he told me the number to call, they sent me a form to send in. Doesn't seem to have had an impact on my tax status or anything. Isn't it strange?? Do Mi ================================================================= ======== Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 23:45:03 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: DStaub11@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Unanalyzed locators after main entries with subs Hilary wrote: > >This isn't quite the same, but is a related problem - what do you do when >there is a whole section on a subject which includes some of the subjects >you have chosen for subheadings? e.g. you have a section on cats from >page 3-11. This includes a few items of interest on Persian cats and >Burmese cats. But you also have subheadings under `cats' for Persian >cats and Burmese cats - which have references in other parts of the book. > Do you add the page numbers from the 3-11 section to the subheadings >(e.g. cats, Persian 4-5, 13, 18), or expect people to read the section on >cats 3-11 anyway and therefore miss out 4-5 after cats, Persian? > Yes, you add the page numbers. The principle (which I used to call Do Mi's First Rule of Editing when I trained indexers) is that if a concept is listed in the index, the reader must be confident that all references to that concept are included in the entry, ^either^ directly ^or^ through a see also reference. If I saw Cats, Persian, 13, 18, I would assume that Persian cats were not discussed anywhere else. Sometimes this gets unwieldy when a concept that needs a subheading because of discussions elsewhere in the book turns up over and over again in a chapter or large section. Then I sigh and figure out what to do. But those mentions must be included (in my maybe-not-humble-enough opinion :-) ). Do Mi ================================================================= ======== Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 23:44:56 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: DStaub11@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Unanalyzed locators and vocab words (kind of long) Lynn wrote: > Why do some indexers create >main headings followed by unanalyzed locators, yet analyze other references >of the subject in a list of subentries for the same heading? In other words, >why analyze some but not all references to a given subject? Do the unanalyzed >locators represent: > >a) passages where the term is merely defined; >b) passages where the subject is discussed very broadly that the unanalyzed > locators are used instead of a subentry saying "described"; >c) passages containing merely passing references to the subject. >d) early instances of the term where the indexer didn't create subentries, then said later "Ooops, I better start analyzing this or I'll end up with too >many unanalyzed locators" but didn't go back and analyze the others. ;-D I often do this. The reasons are a), b) or c). I find it awkward to use "described" as a subentry (especially since every page reference in the heading could technically go under it). I do sometimes use "defined" as a subhead. Anything for which there isn't really an appropriate subhead goes after the main head. If I'm short on space, I'll sometimes eliminate subheadings and put fewer than 5 or 6 of the references there, though I go back and forth about this. Hazel Bell's discussion of it in her biography booklet made me think about the implications of arbitrarily analyzing some and not others. Reason d) would be really tacky. Of course this happens, but then I go back and make the subheads (or decide to leave some in the general section on a reasonable basis)! For one thing, one of those unanalyzed refs might belong in a subhead I made later. Oh, and there's a reason e): a long continued section about the subject. I think it's useful to let the reader know that the Civil War is discussed on pages 130-150, even though I'm breaking it down into subheads in addition. Lynn also wrote: >OK folks, here's another question. I've found that textbooks often contain vocabulary words that, IMHO, should be indexed, however they are often adjectives, adverbs, or verbs. In other words, they aren't nouns. I've jumped through hoops trying to recast them as nouns. For example, I've converted verbs to their gerund (noun) form, I've tacked nouns onto the end of adjectives when doing so doesn't distort or limit the scope of the term (not always possible), etc. How do the rest of you handle this problem? Do you bend the rule about using only nouns as main headings and index the vocabulary words exactly as they appear in the text or what? (I have seen them indexed as they appear in the text, but non-noun forms do look strange to me in an index.) Thanks for any input.<< Interesting questions, Lynn! I deal with this all the time, too. By vocabulary words, do you mean words that are formally labeled or defined in the text or a running glossary? I'm attached to the rule that index headings need to be nouns or noun phrases (including gerunds). When I pick up terms in a text in the normal way, I convert them to noun phrases if necessary--assuming, as Elinor points out, that the noun phrase is recognizable as the same word (ie no "erasure" instead of deleting!) The problem I run into is when there's a glossary and the editor wants the glossary terms specifically in the index. This drives me nuts. I think that the index and the glossary are two different (and important) parts of the book, but combining them (even to the extent of putting all glossary terms in their exact form with boldfaced page references) requires compromise to the index. (I'm not even talking about what one editor wanted--the actual definitions in the index! And those glossary terms were just phrases lifted from the text in whatever form they happened to be in in the sentence...Aaack!) The boldfaced-glossary terms solution sounds so nice to editors. I just went through this on my last job. The problem is that then I'm constrained in how I word and organize the index. If they want this, I always ask them up front if I can 1) put my main headings under the most appropriate wording, even if it doesn't happen to be the glossary term (with a see also from the glossary term if necessary) and 2) change the forms of glossary words so that they're appropriate as headings. For instance, the book I just indexed had "division of labor by gender" in the glossary. So they wanted it in the index in that form, under D. I had a large category called Gender roles, with division of labor as a subhead; I ended up with the D entry and a see also to Gender roles. But ordinarily I wouldn't be caught dead making an entry worded in that unwieldy way! Another example: many of the glossary entries were adjectives (usually with the noun as the first word of the definition: acephalous: a political system in which...). At first my editor, though she agreed that entries needed to be in noun form, wanted me to (get this) make a subheading like this: Acephalous political systems, (sub) acephalous (adj.). Fortunately, I talked her out of it! But the index was still much more awkward than I could feel proud of without that constraint. I guess I can see the argument for putting boldfaced references in (one more tool for the reader) but the whole thing makes me feel whiny. I want to choose my own index terms based on my own analysis of the text! (Taking into account, as I always do, the terminology used by the author.) Whine, whine! Thanks for listening...! Do Mi ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 06:38:11 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Pam Rider Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks I think we seriously disagree. >Of course adverbs and adjectives can be perfectly good vocabulary words. >It's highly desirable, though, to cast vocabulary words in a form that >enhances the reader's ability to find them later, in the index. I think the original usage is important. Period. Elsewise it is the professional place of the indexer to deal with and not to whine about poor editing. Obviously, >this is a problem in many books...and not just for the reader, but for >professional indexers such as Lynn and myself (and the others who commented) >who have encountered it. I am a fully professional indexer for 14 years. > >I'm indexing a contract law book at the moment, in which the adjective >"legal," standing by itself, is a boldface vocabulary term that must be >indexed. The full term OUGHT to be "legal contract," as explained in the >text (but not bolded in the marginal definition). this has been well handled on the list. I have dealt with such as: legal as term But will probably switch to the parenthetical form outlined on the list. It is a copyeditor's responsibility, among other things, to be certain material makes sense. It is also a copyeditor's task to seek consisistency. It is lack of editing consistency which most bedevils me when indexing. Let us conclude by agreeing to disagree. Pam Rider Trying to walk cheerfully on the Earth prider@powergrid.electriciti.com prider@tsktsk.com http://www.electriciti.com:80/~prider/ ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 10:46:20 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hazel Blumberg-McKee Subject: Charlotte Skuster's address I'm sorry to bother you folks with this. I *know* I should have Charlotte Skuster's address in my address book, but I don't. If someone could send me her e-mail address, I would greatly appreciate it--and I *promise* to record it in my address book. TIA, Hazel Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) "I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers."--Anonymous ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 11:37:00 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hazel Blumberg-McKee Subject: Copyediting In-Reply-To: <199610201412.KAA26579@polaris.net> On Sun, 20 Oct 1996, Pam Rider wrote: > It is a copyeditor's responsibility, among other things, to be certain > material makes sense. It is also a copyeditor's task to seek consisistency. > It is lack of editing consistency which most bedevils me when indexing. I completely agree with Pam. Yes, this is indeed the copyeditor's responsibility. However, being a copyeditor can be a truly frustrating experience. Many of us receive editing projects in batches and are expected to return batches of editing work. Although I try to keep an extremely detailed style sheet as I work, some things inevitably slip through. Unfortunately, many publishers have a "Who cares?" attitude. One long-ago client (no longer a client) told me to "simply flip the pages" and not edit much, although the book needed a heavy edit. The author, although he was a terrible writer who was extremely disorganized, was a major writer in his field. The press felt that his words could not be changed. The author was also a prima donna. What is an editor to do? It can be terribly frustrating to be an editor. Thank goodness there are many wonderful clients out there who truly care about the quality of their books. Hazel Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) "I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers."--Anonymous ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 11:50:33 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Cynthia D. Bertelsen" Subject: Re: Term selection (was Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks) At the risk of beating a dead horse, I would like to point out again that we do have guidelines for the sorts of issues we have been raising vis a vis indexing vocabulary words, etc. These guidelines are indexing standards, which attempt to provide us with the archetype to which we should aspire. The question here is really about the part of speech (remember 8th grade grammar, folks?) of the term used in the index, and the American NISO Standards state that "Nouns, including verbal nouns (gerunds) and noun phrases, are the preferred parts of speech for terms." (Section 6.3.1 Parts of Speech, NISO Standards). The original usage may be what the author thinks is appropriate and inconsistency in editing CAN create nightmares for the indexer, BUT I think that the indexer has an obligation to the user--our real "customer" in fact--to make the terms as clear and consistent as possible. Cross-references can also help somewhat to alleviate this problem. If this Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 20:44:39 +0000 From: BITNET list server at BINGVMB (1.8a) Subject: File: "INDEX-L LOG9610C" To: Julius Ariail means changing the form of the term, then that is what has to be done to ensure that the reader benefits most. Therefore, I do not believe that we as a group should blindly follow the usage in the book when it conflicts with professional and international standards for our product. At 06:38 AM 10/20/96 -0700, Pam Rider wrote: >I think we seriously disagree. >>Of course adverbs and adjectives can be perfectly good vocabulary words. >>It's highly desirable, though, to cast vocabulary words in a form that >>enhances the reader's ability to find them later, in the index. > >I think the original usage is important. Period. Elsewise it is the >professional place of the indexer to deal with and not to whine about poor >editing. ************ Cynthia D. Bertelsen INDEXER Blacksburg, VA cbertel@nrv.net http://www.vt.edu:10021/B/bertel/ndx.html ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 12:02:58 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Rachel Rice Subject: mistakes after the fact Hi all, Out of lurkdom with another question. If you find you've made an error, or done something that isn't the best you could have done, in an index you've already sent out but that won't have been printed yet, do you contact your person and ask to make a change, or do you let it go (assuming it's just a judgment or editing error, and not one that would really confuse a reader)? I ask because I have just discovered something I wish I had done differently in an index that will arrive tomorrow at my contact's desk. I seriously doubt it will be noticed, as the index I was sent by way of a sample "to go by" was absolutely pitiful. My one (non-egregious) error probably won't even be considered an error by them at all. I don't mean to sound like a weasel, but I wonder if it's worth making waves over. FYA (for your amusement), the sample index they sent me had these, by way of example: Frank, A., 223, 224 Frank, Anne, 223, 224, 226, 228 and Freud, S., 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 12, 14, 15, 18, 19, and on for about 27 non-analyzed locators and I'm not exaggerating. and mostly more of similar throughout. RR Rachel Rice Directions Unlimited Desktop Services Chilmark, Mass. rachelr@tiac.net; http://www.tiac.net/users/rachelr/ ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 12:16:22 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Sonsie Subject: Re: mistakes after the fact At 12:02 PM 10/20/96 -0400, Rachel Rice wrote: >Out of lurkdom with another question. If you find you've made an error, or >done something that isn't the best you could have done, in an index you've >already sent out but that won't have been printed yet, do you contact your >person and ask to make a change, or do you let it go (assuming it's just a >judgment or editing error, and not one that would really confuse a reader)? I think it shows a high degree of professionalism to call and say something like, "I discovered that I had done X when it really should have been Y. Here's the easy fix...[blah, blah, blah]." Or offer to fax or email the changed portion direct to the publisher (or typesetter, if it's gone that far). It's an especially nice touch if the "problem" is fairly miniscule and one they wouldn't notice anyway. (This is, of course, different from having made a major error which MUST be corrected immediately.) You are showing that you're somewhat of a perfectionist (a Good Thing in an indexer or editor), you're doing this voluntarily, the change is minor (so you're not just covering your behind for a big problem), and so on. My only word of advice is to know who you're working with. If the person is a total newbie who is inexperienced with indexing problems, ANY problem, however minor, can look like a Big Deal. Thus, reporting a minor snafu and offering to correct it might get taken the wrong way. But the average production editor with any experience will probably be delighted that you called, even if he or she decides not to mess with the product. =Sonsie= ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 16:14:24 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: LLFEdServ@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Copyediting I am with Hazel on this one. I get batches and have to return them before I even see the next one, and as much as I try to keep a detailed style sheet, something pops up and nails me. I can say, "I know I saw that term/word in Chap. 3, but that has been long gone out of my office." The worst embarrassment is when I index something I've copyedited and find an inconsistency. I sit in front of the computer and die a little. Then I contact the publisher and correct the mistake. Leslie Leslie Leland Frank Editorial Services ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 16:17:51 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks In a message dated 96-10-20 10:16:09 EDT, Pam wrote: > I think we seriously disagree. Who's "we"? Then, quoting someone without attribution: > >Of course adverbs and adjectives can be perfectly good vocabulary words. > >It's highly desirable, though, to cast vocabulary words in a form that > >enhances the reader's ability to find them later, in the index. Pam, It would be very helpful when you quote someone that you say who it is. We've covered this ground before when you did to me personally. Being that you took me out of context, I have no idea if you're doing the same thing here. Some of us follow these threads very closely and I went through every single message posted to this thread and cannot find the source of this. So, it is quite impossible to find the entire context of what you're addressing. > > I think the original usage is important. Period. Elsewise it is the > professional place of the indexer to deal with and not to whine about poor > editing. Now, having looked through all of the messages posted to this thread, I haven't found a single whine. Of course, not knowing who posted the message that you're responding to, I can't verify that, nor judge for myself whether your characterization of the individual's remarks is at all a fair one. However, just on general principle, to discuss poor editing here is not whining. If we can't express our legitimate concerns about various indexing issues here, then where? Anyway, the whole point of this thread *is* to *deal* with it in a way that not only meets everyone's needs but is in accordance with standard indexing practices (which have the same goal). Making a statement, then saying "Period" certainly doesn't initiate further discussion of any subject--or is that exactly what you intend by that? Quoting the mystery poster again: > Obviously, > >this is a problem in many books...and not just for the reader, but for > >professional indexers such as Lynn and myself (and the others who commented) > > >who have encountered it. You replied: > > I am a fully professional indexer for 14 years. So, is this a thing of oneupmanship here? Or does it go along with your "Period" statement to indicate that you have the last word on the matter? > It is a copyeditor's responsibility, among other things, to be certain > material makes sense. It is also a copyeditor's task to seek consisistency. > It is lack of editing consistency which most bedevils me when indexing. Here I agree with you 1000%! However, I've finally come to the conclusion that books aren't truly written or edited with the indexer in mind. ;-D > > Let us conclude by agreeing to disagree. Whoever the other half of "us" is.... Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 15:01:46 -0500 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "C. Dusheck" Subject: Re: mistakes after the fact In-Reply-To: <199610201944.OAA15188@mail-hub3.weeg.uiowa.edu> sorry to post this to everyone, but I lost my subscription instructions..8-( please subscribe me at my new e-mail address: tomato@ia.net thanks so much ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 16:35:25 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: WordenDex@AOL.COM Subject: Re: vocab. words in index If the entry were "Eppie (Eliot character)," no one would(?) think Eliot was Eppie's last name. This (AuthorSurname character) parenthetical worked very well in a book of essays from an English Dept. author. ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 16:55:46 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hazel Blumberg-McKee Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks In-Reply-To: <199610202028.QAA24346@polaris.net> I have been following this thread with a great deal of interest. It's given me a lot of food for thought and a lot of possibilities for dealing with yet another thorny indexing problem. In a message dated 96-10-20 10:16:09 EDT, Pam wrote: > > I think the original usage is important. Period. I, too, am confused about whose posting is being referred to. But what disturbs me is the implication that all discussion of this topic should cease once one person's opinion is given. We are, after all, subscribers to a listserv, and we're all trying to learn something. If indexing were a simple following of rules A, B, and C, our lives would be oh so much easier. But indexing just doesn't work that way. One person's opinion does not an indexing rule make. Please, folks, can we keep open minds here? Hazel Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) "When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl."--Anonymous ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 17:27:21 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: DStaub11@AOL.COM Subject: Re: fiction characters In a message dated 96-10-19 19:47:27 EDT, you write: > >What do people think of the usage "Eppie (Eliot)" in an index to mean Eppie, >a character in George Eliot's _Silas Marner_? I think it is confusing, as if >Eppie's last name might be Eliot, or Eppie be a nickname for some Eliot or >other. It does save space, but "Eppie (in _Silas Marner_)" is not terribly >long either. > I've always used Eppie (Silas Marner) (with approval from the client for whom I did multiple lit crit books). Do Mi ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 18:25:58 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Emily Rader Subject: Author indexes are free Some thoughts from a trade book editor on this thread and on what some of you have written-- Cynthia D. Bertelsen wrote: >> "My humble opinion is that we indexers as a group must try to make the value of our product clearer to the authors (and in some cases, to the editors)" >> I wholeheartedly agree that indexers should, whenever possible, make clear the value of professional indexes to editors, who have the best access to authors and therefore offer the best possible hope for getting this information to them. Some of my freelance indexers (I'd say the best of them) have taken the time to point out to me what makes a quality index. Of course, I was interested in knowing this information and maybe that's why they felt they could take the time to tell me! Carol Roberts wrote: >> Or, if you want to be a bit nasty (not really a good idea in our business--better to leave bridges unburned), you could say, "I'll have to keep that in mind next time I consider buying one of your books." >> Just have to say I love this. What a perfect comeback for those who dare... Rica Night wrote: >> In Canada--at least among the trade, scholarly, and textbook publishers for whom I've worked--the author pays for the index one way or another. Either the author creates the index (thereby paying in time) or a professional is hired (sometimes directly by the author, other times using the publisher as intermediary) to create it. In the latter case, the money to pay the professional's fee is deducted from the author's royalties. First-time authors sometimes try to create their own. But after finding out how long the process takes and how fiddly it is, or what a lousy job the built-in indexing module on their word processor does, on subsequent books they often ask the publisher for a referral to a qualified pro. >> I'm glad to hear, Rica, that this has been your experience, because, unfortunately, it is not always the case with my authors, several of whom are, in my opinion, cheap. They would rather pay in time than pay out of their pocket books! In fact, in some cases, our authors have produced such poor indexes (for example, they have indexed things under "The"), that we've had to forbid them from doing their own indexes in future works. Recently, I was working with two authors who were very respectful of my abilities, so when I discovered that their index, which was produced by someone working with them on the book, was quite bad, I ventured to identify for them some of the problems with it. For example, their indexer didn't even include page ranges for topics but rather only the page on which the discussion begins! So, I've prepared a list of things to fix, and they've agreed to submit an improved version of the index for the next reprint of the title. For the sake of my company's reputation and mine, I guess that's all I can wish for. Emily ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 18:44:49 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: DP1301@AOL.COM Subject: Re: mistakes after the fact Rachel, Sonsie's reply really covered the waterfront. Here's what happened to me: I have contacted the recipient of a piece that I sent off with a major bobo in it. It wasn't an index -- it was during my fundraising years and the grant proposal I had submitted was early in my experience with word processors. I'd deleted the orginal proposal and then they wanted to send it to another prospect. I furiously typed it back into the wordprocessor, and, in my haste, omitted a crucial line and a half. I wasn't a great proof reader in those days -- this experience was the best kick in the shin to get me more aware... The result sounded as if the entire planet would get rich off the income a not particularly large arboreteum would derive from the sale of seedlings from its spectacular trees. We called immediately - it was before the foundation board was going to meet, and overnight expressed the revision. We told them we had discovered a clerical error and must replace the original. It worked and was well worth the shot. Deborah Deborah Patton INDEXER Baltimore, MD 410/243-4688 dp1301@aol.com ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 16:29:16 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Sonsie Subject: Re: mistakes after the fact At 06:44 PM 10/20/96 -0400, DP1301@AOL.COM wrote: >We told them we had discovered a clerical error and must replace >the original. It worked and was well worth the shot. Exactly how a professional handles the situation...no whining, no hand-wringing, skip the icky details...just make the fix and get it there instantly if possible. Good work! =Sonsie= ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 19:47:37 PDT Reply-To: scks@loclnet.com Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Roy Lee Campbell Subject: Re: Bold coming thru on e-mail In-Reply-To: <18441896808515@loclnet.com> >The down side of this is that you can't correspond with anyone >*about* HTML tags. Any tag you want to appear in your text gets >translated. Last I knew, there was no way around this. > >Dick Evans In order to correspond *about* html tags without their being interpreted by a computer as tags, try the following substitutions. Substitute ampersand, lower-case L, t, semi-colon for the "less than" sign (or opening pointy bracket). Substitute ampersand, g, t, semi-colon for "greater than" sign (or closing pointy bracket). Roy Campbell scks@loclnet.com ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 20:05:45 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Infojo6363@AOL.COM Subject: Business Names Greetings Index-lr's: I am curious as to how many of you have adopted a business name for yourself. Since I may soon be doing this myself I wouldn't want to inadvertently use a name someone else is using. Is the ASI directory a good place to check for this information or could I ask you all to post the info here? TIA Jody ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 17:13:08 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Sonsie Subject: Re: Business Names At 08:05 PM 10/20/96 -0400, Infojo6363@AOL.COM wrote: >Greetings Index-lr's: > >I am curious as to how many of you have adopted a business name for yourself. >Since I may soon be doing this myself I wouldn't want to inadvertently use a >name someone else is using. Is the ASI directory a good place to check for >this information or could I ask you all to post the info here? Yes, I do have a business name...but it covers a lot of territory, since I do a lot of different things. Mine is Catalyst Communication Arts. I'd say yes, check the ASI directory. I'm sure many others have adopted business entity names. BTW, the worst one I ever saw was "War of Words" for a copywriting business here in town. Even though it was clever on the surface, it had a strange uncomfortable undertone, IMO. And the company didn't last long, either. =Sonsie= ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 19:56:23 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Ann Truesdale Subject: Poor Posture Being a newbie, I haven't the experience to comment on most of the the threads on Index-L, but I have been learning a lot from reading your discussions. Thanks to everyone! I'm a little slow getting this posted but I do have some information to contribute here from working with yoga and advice from my cousin who is a physical therapist. Several of you commented on your _bad posture_. If you are referring to slouching which results in an ache between your shoulder blades and/or in your neck, this exercis really has helped me. Sit on the floor cross-legged or kneeling with a pillow between your thighs and calves, whichever is comfortable for you. I imagine sitting on a straight chair of the proper height to give the correct 90 degree angles at hip and knee would work, too. A small pillow under the buttocks helps to prevent your pelvis from tipping too far back -- you want to balance right on your seat bones. Extra pillow not needed in kneeling position. Now, starting from the pelvis and working up your spine imagine your vertebra are child's building blocks and you are stacking them up so that no muscular effort is required to balance the blocks. Rock your pelvis side to side slightly until weight is equal on both seatbones. Then rock forward and back to balance squarely on seatbones. (Most people tend to tip the pelvis too far back, and that's where your support pillow helps.) Repeat these motions until you feel really anchored and supported by the pelvis. Then focus on the lumbar spine and balance those building blocks, then the upper back vertebra. Occasionally, recheck from the pelvis up as your proceed, being careful to keep your -anchored- base. Proceed to the neck. Here you work on three motions, tipping the head from side to side toward the shoulders, backwards and forwards to look up to the ceiling and down to the floor, and #3 which is very important and more difficult to describe. Looking straight ahead (horizontally) push your chin forward and then pull chin in and back as far as possible. All of the above motions work best when you first make a large motion and then less and less until you _hone in_ on the balanced center with almost imperceptible movements, thinking of stacking up those building blocks, and looking for the balance which requires the least muscular effort. Keep checking up and down your spine as you work. Another helpful image when working on the chin-in chin-out part is to think of your head being suspended by a string coming straight out of the top. This balances your head and allows your poor neck to stretch upward. At first, I found this exercise tiring after a few minutes, but it was a ten minute cure for neck tension that I knew would soon turn into a headache. You can't rush things, tho, you have to just keep _centering_ and wait. After doing the exercise almost daily for about two months, I find the balance easier to maintain for longer periods, and often I don't even need the pillow. I usually spend about 15 minutes a day doing this now. It is especially relaxing at bedtime for me. The payoff is that now I naturally sit more erect at the keyboard and if I begin slouching I tend to notice quickly and correct it. I've strengthened those posture muscles, and I feel a big difference. While doing this exercise you can spend some time stretching any sore neck muscles by dropping your head forward or back and gently rolling it from side to side, letting gravity do the work. When you hit an _ouch_ hold there for a minute to let the muscle stretch. Back off if any muscle starts to spasm -- that's what you're trying to fix. See if you can think of a way to gently stretch that muscle that tends to spasm. I am posting another message on a neck stretching execise and an eye exercise separately under _exercise breaks_. -- Ann Truesdale (Anntrue@ix.netcom.com) Yonges Island, SC Definition of insanity: Continuing to do the same thing and expecting to get different results ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 20:19:33 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Ann Truesdale Subject: Exercise breaks To repeat briefly what I said in my _Bad posture_ posting, I'm an indexing newbie, and don't have much to contribute to the list yet. I do have some info from yoga and a physical therapist cousin that I'd like to contribute as a _thank you_ for all the great stuff I'm learning from lurking on the list! Eye exercise: If you read my post of a few weeks back on eye exercises, here's another great one I learned in my yoga class. Alternately, focus on your nose then a far-away object (preferably outside a window), and repeat several times. Neck and upper back stretch: If you have had a neck injury you should check with your Dr. before trying this, but it feels *great* if there's no contraindication to your doing it. You might want to try it first with a rolled up pillow or bolster under your shoulders before you try the real thing. Lie on your back on a firm bed or table with your shoulders on the edge and your head over the edge. Begin by tucking your chin into your chest. Then slowly lower your head back as far as you can while keeping chin tucked. Hold for a few seconds, then release your chin and let your head hang all the way down. Just hang there for a few minutes and enjoy the stretch in your upper back. You can adjust where the edge of the bed supports your shoulders for the best feeling stretch. Also, changing the position of your arms will change the stretch -- palms up, palms down, arms at side, arms out in a T, etc. To come out of the position either roll onto your side, or better, tuck your chin again and raise your head. This exercise was suggested by the PT cousin, and it's a great one for that ache between the shoulder blades! I said to use a bed or table, but I actually use the top of my staircase and hang my head over the top step. Or if the weather is nice and I'm taking an outdoor break, I'll use the edge of my deck. In fact, it has been a long day and I think I'll go stretch right now! -- Ann Truesdale (Anntrue@ix.netcom.com) Yonges Island, SC Definition of insanity: Continuing to do the same thing and expecting to get different results ================================================================= ======== Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 21:40:19 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: JPerlman@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Business Names Jody, I would say checking the ASI Directory is a good starting point. Also, it is a good idea, if you live in a big city, to register the name (eventually) with city and county or state, and they then check for you too. Down the line, when you want a business checking account, you will need to have some type of local registration for the business name, and should find out the requirements in your community. That will ensure that the name stays yours and nobody else uses it. It isn't necessary to have a business name, though. I know many successful, long-time indexers who simply do business as Jane Smith, indexer. Everybody knows you are a sole proprietor and freelancer, so you aren't fooling anybody with a name. They want to hire you, not a company, most of the time. I do have a business name, which is Southwest Indexing, which I wanted for the name recognition, since at the time I didn't know how many of us there were in AZ, and I thought it leant itself to a theme in terms of symbols on business card and letterhead, etc. It has worked pretty well for me. It's a personal thing. If you do select a business name, be sure your name describes what you do, and isn't confusing or esoteric, which would defeat its purpose. Also be sure that the name encompasses all you will want to do in your business, if you have a plan to do more than one thing. Some people offer a range of services, so they edit and index, or do technical documentation and index, or write and index, etc. In that case, the name has to be descriptive. I started out as Southwest Editorial, since I had intended to do more than index. As my business grew, I decided that I would concentrate on the indexing, and so after a few years, decided to become Southwest Indexing. I had not registered my business name as of yet (it may pay to wait a bit), so it was easy to change. My business cards looked the same, and the change was just the one word, so it didn't upset any applecarts. I preferred the more specific name. Give it some thought. I must admit, it is fun, like a dream come true, to select a business name! It's also fun to decide on a symbol or graphic for your business cards, and try to select a name that you can select a graphic to in a place that will do inexpensive business cards with "standard" graphics. Good luck! Janet Perlman Southwest Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 00:04:14 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Termurray@AOL.COM Subject: Re: early indexes This is barely helpful to those interested in early indexes, but while doing some research on medieval Islamic philosophy to help me index a reference book on Islam, I jotted a note about an early work actually called The Index. Information about how to make paper spread across the Islamic Empire in the eighth century; maybe a philosopher came up with indexing while al-Khawarizmi was inventing algebra. Can I find the note? No. Do I remember it's a green Post-It note, on which I wrote the source of this gem? Yes! Reminds me of college, when I could remember exactly where the answer was in my notes but not the answer itself. . . :-) Terry Murray termurray@aol.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- ------------- ------- "...Here's the Golden Archway into Indexing. The Land of Subtle Conceptual Connections." (from "The Originist," in _Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card_, p. 245) ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 00:04:20 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Termurray@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Adjectives inappropriate as main heads Yesterday I found this entry in the "The Joy of Cooking" index: Spaghetti squash, 330 Although there's an entry for Squash, spaghetti, there's no entry for Spaghetti squash, where I initially looked for it. My spaghetti squash eventually made it to the table, but not without a certain professional pique on my part. :-) Terry Murray termurray@aol.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- ------------- ------- "...Here's the Golden Archway into Indexing. The Land of Subtle Conceptual Connections." (from "The Originist," in _Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card_, p. 245) Terry Murray termurray@aol.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- ------------- ------- "...Here's the Golden Archway into Indexing. The Land of Subtle Conceptual Connections." (from "The Originist," in _Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card_, p. 245) ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 00:25:57 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Helen Schinske Subject: Seattle --> Portland? I would be grateful for the chance to ride with other Seattle-area folks going down to Portland for the PNW/ASI meeting November 2nd. I live in Ballard (quite near Jan Wright's house, but alas, she can't make this meeting). Or does anyone plan on taking the train? I have not looked into the Amtrak schedule yet. Helen Schinske HSchinske@aol.com ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 07:47:44 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Rachel Rice Subject: Re: Business Names >Greetings Index-lr's: Jody asked, >I am curious as to how many of you have adopted a business name for yourself. I picked Directions Unlimited as I with my attention deficit disorder (which I think of as more of an enhancement than a disorder) have actually got 3 separate businesses. I have different names for each (Directions Unlimited Desktop Services, RiceWorks International, and the Martha's Vineyard Poop Patrol--go ahead and ask), but all checks are payable to Directions Unlimited and go into that account. RR Rachel Rice Directions Unlimited Desktop Services Chilmark, Mass. rachelr@tiac.net; http://www.tiac.net/users/rachelr/ ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 07:45:17 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hazel Blumberg-McKee Subject: Re: Business Names In-Reply-To: <199610210140.VAA25220@polaris.net> I have never come up with a business name, alas; creativity-challenged, perhaps. ;-) I just use my own name. However, some years back, I did hire a freelance illustrator to come up with a logo for me. I really love what she did! I wear glasses, so she put a pair of glasses on an open book. I showed her what proofreading and editing symbols look like, and she loved them. So, a bunch of them float above the open book and the spectacles. My husband says they look like a bunch of curses. Which they sometimes are! Hazel Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) "When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl."--Anonymous ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 10:40:37 +0000 Reply-To: norcross@ix.netcom.com Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Ann Norcross Organization: Crossover Information Services Subject: Indexing cookbooks Hello all - I've never written or indexed a cookbook, but I have aspirations in both directions. I've been looking for reference books on the subject, and just found a great one. Just thought I'd share it with the list: Title: Recipes into Type: A Handbook for Cookbook Writers and Editors Authors: Joan Whitman and Dolores Simon Publisher: Harper Collins, 1993 ISBN: 0-06-270034-0 Price: $25.00 TOC entries: setting up a recipe; the language of recipes; punctuation; numbers; capitalization; indexing; preparation of the manuscript; format and typography; useful information; word list Comments: Lots of emphasis on indexing--not just writing--a cookbook. This is a true style guide, not just vague ramblings about Aunt Betty's Best Baked Beans :-). Ann Norcross Crossover Information Services P.S. Comfort-level meter reading: As I wrote this note I found myself getting a tad anxious about posting it. I read it over and over to make sure it would not fan any flames. I'm not sure what's going with with Index-L these days, but I just wanted to say that I (just speaking for myself here) don't like all the sniping and flaming, and don't intend to participate. I'm remembering (again, this is for me) that 1) tone does not always come across well in e-mail, 2) I can chose to react with anger and assume a post was meant to offend or I can chose to react with an open mind and assume that I mis-read the tone, 3) I have to remember not to take myself so seriously, to lighten up, and revel in the fact that I am doing what I want to professionally and have the luxury of working out of my house... in my pajamas, and 4) the DELETE key on my keyboard works just fine. This list is an important part of my professional life, and I'm glad you are all "here" in my office today. How do you like my new blue-flannel pj's?? ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 10:50:16 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Linda Solow Blotner Subject: Re: Opera Titles As you have discovered, music indexing can be complicated. Here are some common practices. Music titles are usually treated differently depending on whether they are generic titles or distinctive titles. Distinctive titles (as in operas) are entered under the title as well as the composer; generic titles (such as Sonatas) are usually entered (in indexes, as compared to library cataloging practices) only under the composer. You also need to consider the original title of the work (that usually means the original foreign language title) because musicians may very well look under that title; so you will probably want a double entry if not a reference. Parts of works (as in opera arias) should always be listed as well under the full opera title and composer, not simply under the part. I always include the composer in parentheses for title entries. Finally, there are subject entries. These will depend on the nature of the book and the intended audience. If it is a theory text, for example, an entry under sonatas, subdivided by composers, would be essential. Hope you find this helpful. Linda Solow Blotner At 12:50 PM 10/19/96, you wrote: >Return-Path: >Received: from VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM by uhavax.hartford.edu (MX V4.1 VAX) with SMTP; > Sat, 19 Oct 1996 12:50:29 EDT >Received: from PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM (206.241.12.4) by VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (LSMTP > for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <0.0D7E2350@VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM>; Sat, > 19 Oct 1996 11:49:31 -0500 >Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 12:36:45 -0400 >Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group >Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group >From: Jim Mancall >Subject: Opera Titles >X-To: Indexer's Discussion Group >To: Multiple recipients of list INDEX-L >In-Reply-To: <9610191455.AA04355@is.nyu.edu> > >Hi everyone: > >I need some advice on indexing the titles of operas. My indexing resources >aren't very specific on this issue, and I don't know what the title should >look like in an index. This is what I am imagining: > >Title (opera or opus number) (composer's last name) > >For example: > >_Ballade_ (op. 24) (Grieg), 8, 18 > >Does anyone out there have ideas on this? And what about specific >movements within an opera? Are they indexed in quotations? > >Thanks in advance, > >Jim Mancall > > Linda Solow Blotner Hartt Library University of Hartford West Hartford, CT 06117 860-768-4492 blotner@uhavax.hartford.edu ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 07:50:01 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Linda Sloan Subject: Re: Business names market I'm targeting is the aerospace industry. In this industry you must have such a name to even begin to be credible in their eyes. It is a tough market but I do know the people in it and I speak the language. It is a niche that I feel the most comfortable and happy in. Working with people who are reaching beyond the sky is rewarding when your own personal goals are the same. We are dreamers and doers. (Ok, I'm a little hot on this just after attending a space conference this weekend, with cards in hand) The point is that a company name does help a lot in dealing with larger companies that traditionally do not deal with sole proprietors. In my field it's a requirement. If I had employees, incorporation would probably be next on the business strategy list. Of course, publishers are not my only target. I can get top pay out of aerospace companies technical publications and other relevant dept's. Linda Sloan Information Universe ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 11:04:54 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Julia B. Marshall" Subject: Re: Opera Titles In-Reply-To: <199610200948.FAA24330@cap1.CapAccess.org> Dear Jim and INDEX-Lers I don't have much indexing experience but I am a music librarian. Here's my .02 FWIW. 1) Remember your intended audience. For most of the musical community, if you index _The Magic Flute_, they will automatically think "Mozart." If you are dealing with a more obscure piece, a uniform title, or another _Magic Flute_ by a different composer you would want to have the composer listed to differentiate. On the other hand if you're dealing with a book that's primarily about one composer I don't think that you need to list the composer such as Mozart for every piece you index. 2) PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't exclude information such as opus numbers. They are an immense help to us music librarians trying to identify a particular piece of music. Please remember that Grieg might have written more than one piece called "Ballade." Chopin certainly did. The opus helps to ease that confusion. I can't quote any expert on how to cite the opus number. The way that I've seen it done most often is: Ballade, op. 24, 48 You could also include the composer's name. Ballade, op. 24 (Grieg), 48 You might want to check out a book called _Writing About Music_ by Demar Irvine. The book might be helpful in pinpointing the difficulties of dealing with musical works in general Good Luck Regards Julia Marshall juliam@capaccess.org ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 08:19:50 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Pam Rider Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks >Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 08:18:31 -0700 >To: Indexer's Discussion Group >From: Pam Rider >Subject: Re: Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks > >I greatly apologize for a personal reply going to the list. >>I, too, am confused about whose posting is being referred to. But what >>disturbs me is the implication that all discussion of this topic >>should cease once one person's opinion is given. We are, after all, >>subscribers to a listserv, and we're all trying to learn something. If >>indexing were a simple following of rules A, B, and C, our lives would be >>oh so much easier. But indexing just doesn't work that way. >> >I was answering Sonsie's statement that it was a copyeditor's job to make certain that an adjective or adverb not be a vocabulary word. > >This was amazingly wrongheaded to me. But, apparently the she is entitled to her view and I will continue to hold mine with no personal prejudice toward her. > >It did infuriate me that her communication implied SHE was a PROFESSIONAL indexer and her view prevailed. I have been paid for back-of-the-book indexes for 14 years and have no need to put down the process or qualifications of others so employed or in training. > >The jest of my position is that a skilled indexer can include a non-noun vocabulary word as a primary entry though a variety of means, as well demonstrated in this discussion. Depending on situation, I have used > >Professional, as terminology > >or > >Professional, as vocabulary word > >and now I may well use > >Professional (vocabular word/term) > >Thank-you, Hazel, your point has been taken to heart. > Pam Rider Trying to walk cheerfully on the Earth prider@powergrid.electriciti.com prider@tsktsk.com http://www.electriciti.com:80/~prider/ ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 11:19:45 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Hazel Blumberg-McKee Subject: Working in jammies In-Reply-To: <199610211455.KAA22051@polaris.net> On Mon, 21 Oct 1996, Ann Norcross wrote: > This list is an important part of my > professional life, and I'm glad you are all "here" in my office today. > How do you like my new blue-flannel pj's?? Snazzy! I'm wearing my hot-pink velour mom cat robe (so called because my cats find it has great paw feel). :-)) Hazel Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) "When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl."--Anonymous ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 11:57:35 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Joyce Nester Subject: Re: Working in jammies No flame intended, buy why must notes like this be posted to the whole list? Several people have objected to the personal and/or unnecessary nature of some postings in the past few months, but it doesn't seem to have done any good. Please, keep personal messages (however cute) personal. Many of us do not have time to read all the wonderfully informative notes on this list, much less those that should rightfully be posted to another individual. Thank you for seriously considering this request. Joyce Nester nester@vt.edu >On Mon, 21 Oct 1996, Ann Norcross wrote: > >> This list is an important part of my >> professional life, and I'm glad you are all "here" in my office today. >> How do you like my new blue-flannel pj's?? Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 20:44:39 +0000 From: BITNET list server at BINGVMB (1.8a) Subject: File: "INDEX-L LOG9610C" To: Julius Ariail > >Snazzy! I'm wearing my hot-pink velour mom cat robe (so called because my >cats find it has great paw feel). :-)) > >Hazel > >Hazel Blumberg-McKee (hazelcb@polaris.net) > "When cryptography is outlawed, > bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl."--Anonymous > ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 13:01:11 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Re: mistakes after the fact In a message dated 96-10-20 14:36:44 EDT, Rachel wrote: > I ask because I have just discovered something I wish I had done > differently in an index that will arrive tomorrow at my contact's desk. I > seriously doubt it will be noticed, as the index I was sent by way of a > sample "to go by" was absolutely pitiful. My one (non-egregious) error > probably won't even be considered an error by them at all. I don't mean to > sound like a weasel, but I wonder if it's worth making waves over. > > FYA (for your amusement), the sample index they sent me had these, by way > of example: > > Frank, A., 223, 224 > Frank, Anne, 223, 224, 226, 228 Rachel, Considering the lulus in the sample they sent you, I'm sure they won't notice your error. ;-D (BTW, that really looks like embedded "indexing" run amok. Either they used some hideous concordance generator, or someone blithly went along highlighting "index entries" in the document files without the slightest idea of what they were doing. ;-D) Anyway, I'm sure your client will be impressed if you call them about your "error". It shows that you're a professional that really cares about her work and is willing to stand behind it. Now, you want to talk about errors? Here's a real doozie that I made. I forgot to delete the DOS filename/path that Macrex inserts at the very top of the index unless you tell it not to. Guess when I found this out? When the client nicely sent me the signatures of the printed book as a portfolio copy! And there was the path sitting right at the very top of the index, right before the "A's"! To make it worse, it was a DOS pathname at the beginning of an index to a book about *Macintosh* software! (Moral: don't expect *anyone*, not the client nor the typesetter, to catch these things.) ;-D Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 13:01:37 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Business Names Jody, My business name is TECHindex & Docs (pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable--TECH). When I started my indexing business, I planned to do technical writing in addition to indexing (thus the "& Docs), however never pursued that as a freelancer. (Indexing projects have a much faster turnaround.) Janet gave very good advice when she said to be sure your business name isn't confusing or esoteric and I wish I had known that when I filed the DBA for my business. The point became clear when someone told me that it sounded like "Hickory Dickory Dock". (So, I just say "TECHindex" when answering the phone.) ;-D My logo is an open book, the pages ruffling as in a wind, with a lightning bolt slicing diagonally through it. It's supposed to suggest that my indexes will get you through the book with lightning speed. (Or it could be interpreted as electricity, as in technical documents, high-tech indexing, etc.) ;-D I made the mistake of creating it as a bitmapped graphic, which is impossible to rescale without distortion (except using a photocopier), so I've spent years(!) trying to redraw it as a vector graphic in Corel Draw in a never-ending project. So, if you create your own logo, don't do what I did and use the Windows Paint (or Draw?) applet, which was the only graphics software I had at the time. Don't try hiring an independently wealthy graphics artist to design it either, as I also did at first. She wasn't hungry enough to ever complete it, which is why I rolled my own. I created the stylized "TECHindex & Docs" portion in WinWord using frames so that "index" sits on top of "& Docs" with all of it beside the letters "TECH" which are the height of the entire "index & Docs" portion. (It looks better than it sounds.) Don't try to get cute in Word, like I did. The frames are cranky and like to move around unpredictably whenever I add the whole shebang to various documents (like invoice blanks, fax transmittal sheets, etc.) It's probably best to hand off the whole thing to a professional artist (who isn't independently wealthy) who will do it all right the first time. This is what I'll do soon, being that I'll have to change all of my stationery because the postal service changed my zip code and the phone company will change my area code soon. (Now, isn't that a cute double-whammy? I'm trying to time it before the postal service stops honoring the old zip code, but right after the area code change whenever that will be. Aiiiiish!) Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 13:01:15 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Term selection (was Indexing vocabulary words in textbooks) In a message dated 96-10-20 12:43:31 EDT, Cynthia wrote: > At the risk of beating a dead horse, I would like to point out again that we > do have guidelines for the sorts of issues we have been raising vis a vis > indexing vocabulary words, etc. These guidelines are indexing standards, > which attempt to provide us with the archetype to which we should aspire. > The question here is really about the part of speech (remember 8th grade > grammar, folks?) of the term used in the index, and the American NISO > Standards state that "Nouns, including verbal nouns (gerunds) and noun > phrases, are the preferred parts of speech for terms." (Section 6.3.1 Parts > of Speech, NISO Standards). Cynthia, The "horse" is definitely not dead yet. ;-D And it is certainly good to hear of additional standards and references supporting the practice of using nouns as main headings. (In my original post starting this thread, I mentioned that I couldn't remember where I had seen that, but had seen it more than once.) > > The original usage may be what the author thinks is appropriate and > inconsistency in editing CAN create nightmares for the indexer, BUT I think > that the indexer has an obligation to the user--our real "customer" in > fact--to make the terms as clear and consistent as possible. > Cross-references can also help somewhat to alleviate this problem. If this > means changing the form of the term, then that is what has to be done to > ensure that the reader benefits most. I agree that we have a very serious obligation to the user to make the terms as clear and consistent as possible. However, I'd like to give an example of what can happen when attempting to recast adjectives, for example, as noun phrases. My current book has "heterozygous" as a marginal, glossary term. However, "heterozygous" can refer to a trait or to an individual bearing that trait. So, recasting it as a noun phrase, using one or the other will lead to either having to create separate entries for both (i.e., heterozygous traits; heterozygous individuals or heterozygotes) or as heterozygosity. The problem that can result from casting it as separate entries is a subtle loss of accuracy if you create a subentry "defined" for each of them when it was the slightly broader concept "heterozygous" that the author defined. I know that the change is extremely subtle here and is on the nature of splitting hairs, but that's what we indexers do all day anyway. ;-D There are worse situations, such as the term "racial", which applies to so many things in the text that recasting it as any noun phrase would truly narrow the scope of the original definition. Victoria made an excellent point when she mentioned subentries having to read back to the defined term, which won't be there if recast as a noun phrase. I've been handling these non-noun entries (with the tremendous help provided on the list here) by indexing them as headings followed by the parenthetical phrase "vocabulary word". (However, I'm probably going to change this to something else, such as "glossary term" and go with bolded locators, as Victoria suggested. The more I think of it, the more I like the "symmetry" she mentioned.) None of the non-noun entries are followed by subentries. Handled this way, they're out of the way, over and done with, shorn of their ugly potential for creating structural and other problems in the index, IMHO. (The noun/noun phrase glossary terms will also have bold locators where defined and a "defined" subentry where there is a subentry list.) > > Therefore, I do not believe that we as a group should blindly follow the > usage in the book when it conflicts with professional and international > standards for our product. I wholeheartedly agree. However, I'm wondering if something could be written into the standards to provide guidance for these types of situations. The problem is larger than merely textbook indexing because other types of books (e.g., computer manuals, some medical texts, etc.) often have glossary terms to be indexed as well. As I said earlier, recasting these terms as nouns often creates its own set of problems which are inimical to producing the very clarity and consistency you mentioned above. I don't think that the problem can be totally blamed on sloppy editing or author ignorance. IMHO, it is sometimes necessary to define an adjective (or other non-noun part of speech) as such for the benefit of the reader who may encounter it modifying a wide range of nouns in the text. Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Index ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 13:01:21 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Wildefire@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Unanalyzed locators and vocab words (kind of long) In a message dated 96-10-20 08:27:05 EDT, Do Mi wrote: > Interesting questions, Lynn! I deal with this all the time, too. By > vocabulary words, do you mean words that are formally labeled or defined in > the text or a running glossary? Do Mi, I shouldn't have referred to them as "vocabulary" words (which implies a list to be memorized). ;-D These are words that are formally defined in a running glossary in the margins in my current book. (They are also bolded on their first mention in the text.) However, the question also more broadly applies to books containing formal glossaries at the end of the book or as a list of words defined together somewhere in each chapter. > > I'm attached to the rule that index headings need to be nouns or noun > phrases > (including gerunds). When I pick up terms in a text in the normal way, I > convert them to noun phrases if necessary--assuming, as Elinor points out, > that the noun phrase is recognizable as the same word (ie no "erasure" > instead of deleting!) The problem I run into is when there's a glossary and > the editor wants the glossary terms specifically in the index. This drives > me > nuts. I think that the index and the glossary are two different (and > important) parts of the book, but combining them (even to the extent of > putting all glossary terms in their exact form with boldfaced page > references) requires compromise to the index. (I'm not even talking about > what one editor wanted--the actual definitions in the index! And those > glossary terms were just phrases lifted from the text in whatever form they > happened to be in in the sentence...Aaack!) I'm probably in the minority on this issue, but I index glossaries at the end of books on the theory that the user would like to know where a term is defined. The glossary terms are frequently defined in the text as well, so it's simply a matter of just tacking another locator onto a "defined" subentry in most cases. (However, I've noticed a trend in computer book glossaries where terms/concepts that aren't at all touched upon in the book are included in the glossary. I skip these when indexing the glossary is not an actual requirement. After all, the index is to the book, not to everything else under the sun, IMHO.) > > The boldfaced-glossary terms solution sounds so nice to editors. I just went > through this on my last job. The problem is that then I'm constrained in > how > I word and organize the index. If they want this, I always ask them up front > if I can 1) put my main headings under the most appropriate wording, even if > it doesn't happen to be the glossary term (with a see also from the glossary > term if necessary) and 2) change the forms of glossary words so that they're > appropriate as headings. For instance, the book I just indexed had "division > of labor by gender" in the glossary. So they wanted it in the index in that > form, under D. I had a large category called Gender roles, with division of > labor as a subhead; I ended up with the D entry and a see also to Gender > roles. But ordinarily I wouldn't be caught dead making an entry worded in > that unwieldy way! Another example: many of the glossary entries were > adjectives (usually with the noun as the first word of the definition: > acephalous: a political system in which...). At first my editor, though she > agreed that entries needed to be in noun form, wanted me to (get this) make > a > subheading like this: Acephalous political systems, (sub) acephalous (adj.). > Fortunately, I talked her out of it! But the index was still much more > awkward than I could feel proud of without that constraint. Aiiish! I hear you! Before I came up with the solution that I'm now using (see my response to Cynthia), non-noun glossary terms often created exactly the same nightmarish structural and vocabulary control problems you mentioned. It was a bear to recast them, then have to index around them so to speak. You're right that they lead to an extremely awkward index! Plus, I've seen some outrageously silly, trivial terms boldfaced in textbooks (where the publisher wanted all of them to be indexed), terms that I wouldn't have even considered including in the index, regardless of what part of speech they were. That drives me up the wall!!!!!! I'm soooo glad you brought this up--I thought it was just me!!! ;-D > > I guess I can see the argument for putting boldfaced references in (one more > tool for the reader) but the whole thing makes me feel whiny. I want to > choose my own index terms based on my own analysis of the text! (Taking into > account, as I always do, the terminology used by the author.) Whine, whine! > Thanks for listening...! If that's a whine, you can whine all day as far as I'm concerned. I used to froth at the mouth, spewing a constant stream of blue invective, and even stomp away from computer in disgusted frustration while indexing non-noun glossary terms or extremely silly boldfaced nouns. I'd much rather chose my index entries based on my own analysis as you do. I indexed one book where it looked as if someone decided that any word over three syllables qualified as a glossary term, regardless of its relevance to the subject of the book itself. (I had this image of a gnome on steroids with a highlighter just rampaging through the text indicating what was to be bolded--and therefore indexed. And, I pitied the poor students who would have to study or memorize that malarky.) Needless to say, these indexes, with these braindead forced entries, do not form part of my portfolio. Fortunately, the book I'm currently indexing is extremely well-written, meticulously edited, and all of the glossary terms make sense (including the non-noun terms--see my response to Cynthia about this). I haven't even found a typo yet. Now, thank *you* for giving me to opportunity to vent along with you! :-) Lynn Moncrief TECHindex & Docs Technical and Scientific Indexing ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 10:45:17 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Elinor Lindheimer Subject: business names I never adopted a business name (besides tacking "Indexing Services" after my own name) because it costs money. Each state--or even county--may have different rules, however, so you'll need to check with your local government. A DBA here means running an ad in the paper for several weeks every few years, plus a startup fee and a yearly fee. The aim is to enable customers to find the business owner by name... To each his own, of course. Personally, I don't refer to other indexers based on whether they have a business name or not, but on whether I know them and their work and think they would do a good job. Elinor Lindheimer Elinor Lindheimer Indexing Services elinorl@mcn.org ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 14:30:58 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Susan Holbert Subject: Re: Business Names Jody, I worked many years for publishing clients without having a business name, but when I started having high-tech companies as clients, I needed to appear more professional. At that point, I had business cards and letterhead stationery designed for me (I really did not need them before), and bought a laser printer. I use the business name Indexing Services. I find it's helpful when I call my clients to say This is Susan Holbert from Indexing Services. They know why I'm calling without my having to remind them who I am. My husband is now indexing as well. I do the negotiating and he does the math and science indexing, so the name covers both of us. At 08:05 PM 10/20/96 -0400, you wrote: >Greetings Index-lr's: > >I am curious as to how many of you have adopted a business name for yourself. >Since I may soon be doing this myself I wouldn't want to inadvertently use a >name someone else is using. Is the ASI directory a good place to check for >this information or could I ask you all to post the info here? > >TIA >Jody > > Susan Holbert INDEXING SERVICES 24 Harris Steet Waltham, MA 02154-6105 617-893-0514 susanh@world.std.com "Training workshops and videos" ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 12:07:04 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Pam Rider Subject: Re: Copyediting At 11:37 AM 10/20/96 -0400, you wrote: >On Sun, 20 Oct 1996, Pam Rider wrote: > >> It is a copyeditor's responsibility, among other things, to be certain >> material makes sense. It is also a copyeditor's task to seek consisistency. >> It is lack of editing consistency which most bedevils me when indexing. > >I completely agree with Pam. Yes, this is indeed the copyeditor's >responsibility. However, being a copyeditor can be a truly frustrating >experience. Many of us receive editing projects in batches and are >expected to return batches of editing work. Although I try to keep an >extremely detailed style sheet as I work, some things inevitably slip >through. > I'm lucky. I have, to date, always gotten an entire manuscript. Maintaining consistency, in truth, bedevils me as a copyeditor. I have had the pain and glory of indexing books I have copyedited. It has led to more careful copyediting. >Unfortunately, many publishers have a "Who cares?" attitude. Yes. Some misbegotten bottom-line belief. More of us need to send letters to publishers and to publications such as book reviews about sloppy edting standards. One long-ago >client (no longer a client) told me to "simply flip the pages" and not >edit much, although the book needed a heavy edit. The author, although he >was a terrible writer who was extremely disorganized, was a major writer >in his field. The press felt that his words could not be changed. The >author was also a prima donna. What is an editor to do? > I am currently indexing a book that went through this very scenario. It is the second such "tome" in the past year. The publisher is hearing about problems with the first. I have a very close relationship with this house and stretched it to the limit in squawking about the first index--a common medical condition was given five major names. I got a kindly lecture and the strong feeling that that publisher will not assign the "flip through the pages" manuscripts to me. It's possible, but certainly not a certainty that the swift edit books will not sell, be adopted, or will be returned. I am not holding my breath. Pam Rider Trying to walk cheerfully on the Earth prider@powergrid.electriciti.com prider@tsktsk.com http://www.electriciti.com:80/~prider/ ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 12:26:19 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Sonsie Subject: Re: business names Sorry for the unusual appearance, people...I misaddressed the first reply and forwarded a copy to the correct list address. That's why "my" words appear to be quoted. >At 10:45 AM 10/21/96 -0700, Elinor Lindheimer wrote: > >>I never adopted a business name (besides tacking "Indexing Services" after >>my own name) because it costs money. Each state--or even county--may have >>different rules, however, so you'll need to check with your local >>government. A DBA here means running an ad in the paper for several weeks >>every few years, plus a startup fee and a yearly fee. The aim is to enable >>customers to find the business owner by name... > >This is a good opportunity to review a few things we all should be aware of, and most of us probably are. > >The DBA (Doing Business As) statement that you file with the county clerk is important mainly so that people can find out who the "real you" is if they have a problem with your business practices. It does cost money (around $40 for the publication in my area, and about $15 for the DBA itself), but IMO it's worth it as a sign of professionalism. Note that you don't need a DBA if your business is operated under your own name--this is just for XYZ Indexing, and so on. And you only have to publish every seven years (I think), so that $40 is amortized over a very long time span. > >If you work at home (as most of us do), you should also find out the procedure and requirements for an in-home office permit given by your city, county, parish, whatever. Most places have zoning laws that prohibit (or severely limit) home businesses...and most places also have a procedure for obtaining a variance for a nonconforming use. Almost without exception, a home office doing what we are doing would easily qualify for a variance. Getting one, again, shows your professionalism...and it also keeps an angry neighbor from turning you in for some imagined problem on the basis that you don't have the required permit. This happened to a friend of mine, and it was most embarrassing and costly to fix. My in-home office permit cost me about $20, plus some paperwork time. A public hearing was called off when none of my neighbors raised any questions about my operations (I had been required to post a hearing notice on my property, plus the city sent postcards to everyone within a block or so notifying them). > >Finally, most localities also require a business license, even if you are operating out of your bedroom. Again, this is relatively cheap for the type of business we run (and gross receipts we usually receive). Mine is $25 a year. > >I am so legal, I squeak! I could probably have gotten away without doing any of this stuff, and nobody would be the wiser. But it's a small price to pay for the "insurance factor." And it's the right thing to do. > =Sonsie= ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 20:50:00 BST-1 Reply-To: jsampson@cix.compulink.co.uk Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: John Sampson Subject: Re: Opera Titles > Adagio, _Oboe Concerto in C minor_ (Marcello) Would you put 'Adagio' as an entry term? I would have thought there were too many pieces of classical music with an adagio movement to make this specific enough. _John Sampson_ ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 16:01:04 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Richard T. Evans" Subject: Re: Working in jammies At 11:57 AM 10/21/96 -0400, Joyce Nestor wrote: >No flame intended, buy why must notes like this be posted to the whole list? No flame intended here either, but I think you did Ann a disservice by quoting her out of context. She was making a serious statement in which the quoted text was the least part. I received your posting before I received Ann's and from what I saw in your posting it seemed a truly frivilous exchange. Now that I have seen Ann's original, I feel differently. The full quotation was: >P.S. Comfort-level meter reading: As I wrote this note I found myself >getting a tad anxious about posting it. I read it over and over to make >sure it would not fan any flames. I'm not sure what's going with with >Index-L these days, but I just wanted to say that I (just speaking for >myself here) don't like all the sniping and flaming, and don't intend to >participate. I'm remembering (again, this is for me) that 1) tone does >not always come across well in e-mail, 2) I can chose to react with >anger and assume a post was meant to offend or I can chose to react with >an open mind and assume that I mis-read the tone, 3) I have to remember >not to take myself so seriously, to lighten up, and revel in the fact >that I am doing what I want to professionally and have the luxury of >working out of my house... in my pajamas, and 4) the DELETE key on my >keyboard works just fine. This list is an important part of my >professional life, and I'm glad you are all "here" in my office today. >How do you like my new blue-flannel pj's?? I think it is ironic that she was "flamed" (however mildly) for a posting that voiced her fear of being flamed! Kinda proved her point. Now I'll stop contributing to the problem and go take my nap. :-) Dick Evans ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 17:22:35 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: JanCW@AOL.COM Subject: Re: business names In a message dated 96-10-21 13:56:27 EDT, Elinor write: > I never adopted a business name (besides tacking "Indexing Services" after > my own name) because it costs money. Yes, it usually costs more to have a fictitious business name (one in which your own name doesn't appear). Fortunately, I could use my last name and still make it a play on words at the same time - Wright Information Indexing Services. (Wright Write Right, or however you want to read into it). But definately register your business name with the state. Jan C. Wright ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 18:48:33 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: LLFEdServ@AOL.COM Subject: Cirque glidepoint Hello everyone, Following our intensive ergonomics discussion, I purchased both a trackball and a glidepoint from Staples. Of course, I lost the receipt, so I can't return the glidepoint now that I've decided I prefer the trackball. It is the mini glidepoint, originally selling for $44.99. I got it on clearance for $32 because the package has the leftover mess of peeled off stickers all over it. If anyone is interested in buying it from me, email me privately and make and offer. Thanks Leslie Leland Frank Leslie Leland Frank Editorial Services ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 15:38:11 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Sonsie Subject: Re: Indexing cookbooks At 10:40 AM 10/21/96 +0000, Ann Norcross wrote: >Hello all - > >I've never written or indexed a cookbook, but I have aspirations in both >directions. I've been looking for reference books on the subject, and >just found a great one. Just thought I'd share it with the list: Ann, this sounds like a dandy! Thanks for telling us about it. I, for one, printed out your message because I do occasionally edit and/or index cookbooks and have a lot of unanswered questions about what works best. I suppose it would help if I was a wonderful cook with a collection of cookbooks, but I'm not and my cookbook collection amounts to maybe 25 books. >P.S. Comfort-level meter reading: As I wrote this note I found myself >getting a tad anxious about posting it. I read it over and over to make >sure it would not fan any flames. I'm not sure what's going with with >Index-L these days, but I just wanted to say that I (just speaking for >myself here) don't like all the sniping and flaming, and don't intend to >participate. I'm remembering (again, this is for me) that 1) tone does >not always come across well in e-mail, 2) I can chose to react with >anger and assume a post was meant to offend or I can chose to react with >an open mind and assume that I mis-read the tone, 3) I have to remember >not to take myself so seriously, to lighten up, and revel in the fact >that I am doing what I want to professionally and have the luxury of >working out of my house... in my pajamas, and 4) the DELETE key on my >keyboard works just fine. This list is an important part of my >professional life, and I'm glad you are all "here" in my office today. >How do you like my new blue-flannel pj's?? Maybe it's the moon (which will be full soon), or the weather, or heaven knows what. I agree heartily with what you've said above, and I'm sorry that a personal correspondence between me and another list member was brought to the list itself--through no fault of my own--and in any way disturbed other list members. I've been on this list for over a year now, and every so often a small flame war breaks out. When I see a post that makes me uncomfortable, I usually just delete it. If I really feel it is necessary, I will respond off-list so as not to continue the battle in front of others who will find the whole thing (a) meaningless and (b) unpleasant. That's how I handled the above situation. List dynamics sometimes forces us to discuss "the late unpleasantness," as it were, just to clear the air and get comfortable again. I think what you said above is extremely important, and in no way constitutes flaming. Thanks for speaking your mind. =Sonsie= ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 19:44:34 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Cynthia D. Bertelsen" Subject: Re: Flames, pajamas, and Indexing cookbooks Please, let's put this to rest. I agree with Joyce Nester that we should not be mentioning our pajamas (heavens, no one wants to know what MINE are like!!!!). We should keep this discussion to professional matters, which we do a great job of, 99.99999 ad infinitum% of the time. Just a brief statement: I cannot imagine a bunch of physicians bringing up their pajamas in a discussion on a listserv! I do not mean to offend anyone, everyone's opnion is valuable, and let's move on. Thanks. >Sonsie wrote : >>At 10:40 AM 10/21/96 +0000, Ann Norcross wrote: >>P.S. Comfort-level meter reading: This list is an important part of my >>professional life, and I'm glad you are all "here" in my office today. >>How do you like my new blue-flannel pj's?? >Sonsie wrote: >Maybe it's the moon (which will be full soon), or the weather, or heaven >knows what. I agree heartily with what you've said above, and I'm sorry that >a personal correspondence between me and another list member was brought to >the list itself--through no fault of my own--and in any way disturbed other >list members. > >I've been on this list for over a year now, and every so often a small flame >war breaks out. When I see a post that makes me uncomfortable, I usually >just delete it. If I really feel it is necessary, I will respond off-list so >as not to continue the battle in front of others who will find the whole >thing (a) meaningless and (b) unpleasant. That's how I handled the above >situation. > >List dynamics sometimes forces us to discuss "the late unpleasantness," as >it were, just to clear the air and get comfortable again. I think what you >said above is extremely important, and in no way constitutes flaming. Thanks >for speaking your mind. > > =Sonsie= > > ************ Cynthia D. Bertelsen INDEXER Blacksburg, VA cbertel@nrv.net http://www.vt.edu:10021/B/bertel/ndx.html ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 19:54:13 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: "Cynthia D. Bertelsen" Subject: Re: Flames, pajamas, and Indexing cookbooks Of course, I misspelled opinion! Please, let's put this to rest. I agree with Joyce Nester that we should not be mentioning our pajamas (heavens, no one wants to know what MINE are like!!!!). We should keep this discussion to professional matters, which we do a great job of, 99.99999 ad infinitum% of the time. Just a brief statement: I cannot imagine a bunch of physicians bringing up their pajamas in a discussion on a listserv! I do not mean to offend anyone, everyone's opnion is valuable, and let's move on. Thanks. >Sonsie wrote : >>At 10:40 AM 10/21/96 +0000, Ann Norcross wrote: >>P.S. Comfort-level meter reading: This list is an important part of my >>professional life, and I'm glad you are all "here" in my office today. >>How do you like my new blue-flannel pj's?? >Sonsie wrote: >Maybe it's the moon (which will be full soon), or the weather, or heaven >knows what. I agree heartily with what you've said above, and I'm sorry that >a personal correspondence between me and another list member was brought to >the list itself--through no fault of my own--and in any way disturbed other >list members. > >I've been on this list for over a year now, and every so often a small flame >war breaks out. When I see a post that makes me uncomfortable, I usually >just delete it. If I really feel it is necessary, I will respond off-list so >as not to continue the battle in front of others who will find the whole >thing (a) meaningless and (b) unpleasant. That's how I handled the above >situation. > >List dynamics sometimes forces us to discuss "the late unpleasantness," as >it were, just to clear the air and get comfortable again. I think what you >said above is extremely important, and in no way constitutes flaming. Thanks >for speaking your mind. > > =Sonsie= > > ************ Cynthia D. Bertelsen INDEXER Blacksburg, VA cbertel@nrv.net http://www.vt.edu:10021/B/bertel/ndx.html ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 20:12:13 +0600 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: JOYCE NESTER Subject: Re: Flames, pajamas, and Indexing cookbooks Thanks, Cindy. You probably saved me from making a fool of myself. (again?!?!?!) At 07:44 PM 10/21/96 -0400, you wrote: >Please, let's put this to rest. I agree with Joyce Nester that we should >not be mentioning our pajamas (heavens, no one wants to know what MINE are >like!!!!). > >We should keep this discussion to professional matters, which we do a great >job of, 99.99999 ad infinitum% of the time. Just a brief statement: I >cannot imagine a bunch of physicians bringing up their pajamas in a >discussion on a listserv! > >I do not mean to offend anyone, everyone's opnion is valuable, and let's >move on. > >Thanks. > >>Sonsie wrote : >>>At 10:40 AM 10/21/96 +0000, Ann Norcross wrote: > > >>>P.S. Comfort-level meter reading: This list is an important part of my >>>professional life, and I'm glad you are all "here" in my office today. >>>How do you like my new blue-flannel pj's?? > >>Sonsie wrote: >>Maybe it's the moon (which will be full soon), or the weather, or heaven >>knows what. I agree heartily with what you've said above, and I'm sorry that >>a personal correspondence between me and another list member was brought to >>the list itself--through no fault of my own--and in any way disturbed other >>list members. >> >>I've been on this list for over a year now, and every so often a small flame >>war breaks out. When I see a post that makes me uncomfortable, I usually >>just delete it. If I really feel it is necessary, I will respond off-list so >>as not to continue the battle in front of others who will find the whole >>thing (a) meaningless and (b) unpleasant. That's how I handled the above >>situation. >> >>List dynamics sometimes forces us to discuss "the late unpleasantness," as >>it were, just to clear the air and get comfortable again. I think what you >>said above is extremely important, and in no way constitutes flaming. Thanks >>for speaking your mind. >> >> =Sonsie= >> >> > >************ > >Cynthia D. Bertelsen >INDEXER >Blacksburg, VA >cbertel@nrv.net >http://www.vt.edu:10021/B/bertel/ndx.html > ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 20:13:09 +0600 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: JOYCE NESTER Subject: Re: Flames, pajamas, and Indexing cookbooks I didn't even notice! Well, let's hope you don't get flamed for misspelling!!!! At 07:54 PM 10/21/96 -0400, you wrote: >Of course, I misspelled opinion! > >Please, let's put this to rest. I agree with Joyce Nester that we should >not be mentioning our pajamas (heavens, no one wants to know what MINE are >like!!!!). > >We should keep this discussion to professional matters, which we do a great >job of, 99.99999 ad infinitum% of the time. Just a brief statement: I >cannot imagine a bunch of physicians bringing up their pajamas in a >discussion on a listserv! > >I do not mean to offend anyone, everyone's opnion is valuable, and let's >move on. > >Thanks. > >>Sonsie wrote : >>>At 10:40 AM 10/21/96 +0000, Ann Norcross wrote: > > >>>P.S. Comfort-level meter reading: This list is an important part of my >>>professional life, and I'm glad you are all "here" in my office today. >>>How do you like my new blue-flannel pj's?? > >>Sonsie wrote: >>Maybe it's the moon (which will be full soon), or the weather, or heaven >>knows what. I agree heartily with what you've said above, and I'm sorry that >>a personal correspondence between me and another list member was brought to >>the list itself--through no fault of my own--and in any way disturbed other >>list members. >> >>I've been on this list for over a year now, and every so often a small flame >>war breaks out. When I see a post that makes me uncomfortable, I usually >>just delete it. If I really feel it is necessary, I will respond off-list so >>as not to continue the battle in front of others who will find the whole >>thing (a) meaningless and (b) unpleasant. That's how I handled the above >>situation. >> >>List dynamics sometimes forces us to discuss "the late unpleasantness," as >>it were, just to clear the air and get comfortable again. I think what you >>said above is extremely important, and in no way constitutes flaming. Thanks >>for speaking your mind. >> >> =Sonsie= >> >> > >************ > >Cynthia D. Bertelsen >INDEXER >Blacksburg, VA >cbertel@nrv.net >http://www.vt.edu:10021/B/bertel/ndx.html > ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 21:10:14 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: WordenDex@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Business Names Isn't using a generic, functional name like Indexing Services for a particular business akin to using Kleenex to name all facial tissue? I don't think many indexers have trademarked or even service-marked their business names, but using a generic name could either inadvertantly or deliberately set the standard for what people might expect from it. Having Indexing Services be part of a particular name, e.g., Holbert Indexing Services does seem reasonable. Alone, however, is really gutsy! Diane Worden, Kalamazoo, Mich. ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 21:58:35 -0600 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Carol Roberts Subject: Re: Business Names I didn't think I would need a business name at all, since I'm not required to file a DBA. But now that I'm writing a brochure for my business, the front of it's going to say "Roberts Indexing Services." Cheers Carol Roberts, indexer and copy editor | Life is good. Carol.Roberts@mixcom.com | Milwaukee, WI | ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 23:11:01 -0400 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: LLFEdServ@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Flames, pajamas, and Indexing cookbooks Without intending to flame, or even imply criticizism in any way, I understand that some people don't want the more personal information that slips in occasionally (ie., pajamas). On the other hand, most indexers are very isolated. We are not doctors working in offices with other people. So, I think for many, this list is a very large part of our daily contact with humanity. And I know when I worked in an office, we discussed a lot worse than pajamas! I am not offended by the occasional personal comment for that very reason. I am one of those who relies on the index postings for human contact. Now, I'd be the first to say, if I want to continue the contact with one specific person, private email is the way to go. But, on the other hand, it doesn't do any harm to my day, and may even lighten it a little, to know that there are other human beings out there. And many of us work under the same conditions--home offices, kids in and out of school, families surrounding us (sometimes helping, sometimes not), so sometimes the personal is related. It may also contribute to maintaining sanity. Please don't get the wrong idea; I'm not suggesting we start a coffee clatch or anything. So, to sum up quickly, I respect those who desire to keep it 100% professional, but I sure appreciate the .001% personal. Leslie Leslie Leland Frank Editorial Services ================================================================= ======== Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 20:43:53 -0700 Reply-To: Indexer's Discussion Group Sender: Indexer's Discussion Group From: Sonsie Subject: Re: Business Names At 09:10 PM 10/21/96 -0400, WordenDex@AOL.COM wrote: >Isn't using a generic, functional name like Indexing Services for a >particular business akin to using Kleenex to name all facial tissue? I >don't think many indexers have trademarked or even service-marked their >business names, but using a generic name could either inadvertantly or >deliberately set the standard for what people might expect from it. Having >Indexing Services be part of a particular name, e.g., Holbert Indexing >Services does seem reasonable. Alone, however, is really gutsy! I'm not sure I understand your concern here. "Indexing Services" does indeed say what the business does...whether or not a person's name is appended to the rest of the title. And you could also say it "sets a standard"...in that "indexing" would be the service offered, not editing, or writing, or graphic design. I doubt that any of us would ever want to or need to trademark our business name, or create a service mark out of it...we're simply not that big. But I think I must be missing the rest of your meaning. =Sonsie=