Indexing Documents and Books | Adobe InDesign CS3 Bible

If you've ever been unable to find information in a book that you knew was there, you'll appreciate how important a good index can be. Short, simple documents can get by fine without indexes. But long books almost always need indexes to help the reader locate specific information. Indexing used to be a laborious process, involving lots of index cards. InDesign makes indexing much easier, while still relying on you to make key decisions about how the index will be formatted. The following sections show you how to do your part.

Cross-Reference ‚

After reading this chapter, you may find that you need a more sophisticated indexing tool than InDesign provides. Check out Sonar Bookends InDex Pro by Virginia Systems, to which I have a link on the companion Web site ( www.INDDcentral.com ). In addition, the company offers Sonar Bookends InXref for creating cross-references in text that update automatically and Sonar Bookends InFnote for creating footnotes in InDesign documents.

Choosing an indexing style

Your approach to developing an index depends on the indexing style you want to use. Large publishers usually have their own house style guides for indexes. If you don't have a style guide for indexes, I recommend that you read through the indexing guidelines in The Chicago Manual of Style. Another option is to use an index you like as a model and then take the steps necessary in InDesign to achieve that index style. Before you begin indexing your document, ask yourself the following questions:

Do you want to capitalize all levels of all entries, or do you just want initial caps?
Should headings appear in boldface?
What type of punctuation will you use in your index?
Will you capitalize secondary entries in the index?
Should the index be nested or run-in style (see the sidebar "Nested or run-in index?")?

Once you make these decisions, it's a good idea to make a small dummy of your index. From the dummy , create a master page for index pages, paragraph style sheets for letter headings (A, B, C, and so on in the index), paragraph style sheets for each level of the index (including indents as appropriate), and character style sheets for any special formatting you want on page numbers or cross-reference text. InDesign doesn't do any of this for you ‚ if you don't set up style sheets for your index, your multilevel index will simply look linear when it's built.

Using the Index pane

When a chapter or document is ready to be indexed, open the Index pane (Window ‚ Type & Tables ‚ Index, or Shift+F8). You use this pane to add words to the index in up to four indent levels, edit or delete index entries, or create cross-references. The Index pane appears in Figure 9-7.

Figure 9-7: The Index pane.

Understanding Reference and Topic modes

The Index pane has two modes, indicated by the radio buttons at the top: Reference and Topic. Reference mode is the mode you should be in when adding and editing entries from selected text. If you're creating an index in a book, be sure to click the Book check box as well in the Index pane.

The Topic mode is meant to give you a clean environment in which to enter the topic names and levels that you want your index to have. Then, when an indexer adds an index entry, she can use the topics that appear in the bottom of the New Page Reference and double-click the topic to use that topic definition rather than whatever she might enter herself in the dialog box. You don't have to use Topic mode if you don't want to ‚ all index entries create topics (InDesign-speak for the entry text). Although a well-intentioned feature meant to help standardize index entries, the Topic mode's use is not intuitive, and most indexers will simply ignore it, adding entries manually from selected text or by typing phrases into the Index pane when in Reference mode.

Note that only topics have actual references (where text occurs on actual pages, not in the pasteboard , on a master page, or in overset text) or cross-references. So don't worry about unused topic text appearing in your index.

Entering index items

To add entries to your index, choose New Page Reference from the Index pane's palette menu to get the dialog box shown in Figure 9-8. Here's how the controls work:

Figure 9-8: The New Page Reference dialog box. The bottom portion changes if you select one of the cross-reference options in the Type pop-up menu, as shown in the dialog box portion at the bottom of the figure.

If you selected text first in your document, the text is entered automatically into Topic Level 1. Otherwise, type in the text that you want to add to the index. The text will be added to the Topic list and, if it is in the document, also to the list of index entries.
You can enter text that controls how the entry is sorted in the Sort By column. For example, if the highlighted text is The Zango Group , but you wanted it sorted as if it were Zango Group, The (so it appears with the Z entries in the index), enter Zango Group, The in the Sorted By column. Similarly, you might have the movie title 2001: A Space Odyssey sorted as Two Thousand and One: A Space Odyssey so the listing appears properly with the T entries in the index.
More complex indexes will take advantage of the four possible entry levels. You may want an index entry to appear under a higher-level topic. For example, you may want 2001: A Space Odyssey to appear in the index under Classic Science Fiction, in which case you would enter Classic Science Fiction in the Topic Level 1 field and 2001: A Space Odyssey in the Topic Level 2 field.

Use the Type pop-up menu to determine the page entries for the index entry. The pop-up menu has two basic sections.

One section covers the entry's range ‚ typically, you just want the current page number the text appears on, but in some cases, you might want to indicate that a topic spans a number of pages, a document section, all text with a specific style, or one of the other options. For example, if you have a section about France in a world-history book, you might want the main entry to indicate the whole section ‚ such as France, 167-203, while leaving references in other sections (such as references in a section on Germany) to be for just the page it appears on. If you choose For Next # of Pages or For Next # of Paragraphs, the dialog box will display the Number field for you to enter how many paragraphs or pages you want the index entry's range to span. Note that you can apply a character style to the page number generated in the index by checking Number Style Override and choosing a character style in the pop-up menu to its right.
The other section covers cross-references, letting you choose from several types. The dialog box changes slightly, as shown in Figure 9-8, if you choose a cross-reference entry. It adds the Reference text field for you to enter the text that the index will contain after the cross-reference. For example, in the figure, the entry secure login will display in the index as Secure login: See login ID. You can create your own custom cross-references by choosing [Custom Cross-reference]; InDesign will display the Custom text field and pop-up menu in which you enter (or select from previously entered) text that you want InDesign to use. For example, you might want the cross-reference to say Go to rather than one of the defaults like See.

Note ‚

Use See to point readers to the appropriate index entry; use See Also to point the readers to additional useful information elsewhere in the index; use See Herein to point readers to a subentry for this index entry; and use See Also Herein to point readers to additional useful information in a subentry to this index entry.

To add text within the range specified, click Add. (If the text entered is not in the specified range, the text will be added to the Topic list, but no index entry will appear for the text.) To add all occurrences of the text in the document (or book), click Add All.

To change previously defined index entries, choose Page Reference Options in the Index pane's palette menu.

Note ‚

At the bottom of the New Page Reference dialog box is a list of letters as well as the entry Symbols. You can scroll through this list of headings to see what is already in the index under each letter. Although you might think clicking a letter would force the current index entry to appear in that letter's section of the index, it does not.

Nested or run-in index?

There is no right way to index, but common sense should be a guide. Determine which index format you use by the number of levels in the index's hierarchy. If the index has only two levels, a run-in format works well, but an index with three or more levels requires a nested format for the sake of clarity.

Nested indexes look like this:

Kitchen Hardware
‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ Buying, 191
‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ Cost estimates, 242 ‚ 248
‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ Design guidelines 92 ‚ 94, 96, 99 ‚ 101
‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ Hiring contractors, 275 ‚ 284
‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ Installation, 180 ‚ 195
‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ Sizing, 91 ‚ 99
‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ Standards, 24 ‚ 28, 98, 133
‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ Tools, 199 ‚ 203, 224, 282 ‚ 283

Run-in indexes look like this:

Kitchen Hardware: Buying, 191; Cost estimates, 242 ‚ 248; Design guidelines
‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ 92 ‚ 94, 96, ‚ 99 ‚ 101; Hiring contractors, 275 ‚ 284; Installation, 180 ‚ 195; Sizing,
‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ 91 ‚ 99; Standards,24 ‚ 28, 98, 133; Tools, 199 ‚ 203, 224, 282 ‚ 283

Although InDesign doesn't force you to make this decision until you actually build the index, you really need to make it before you get started. If you tag words for a four-level nested index, but then build a run-in index, your index will have some logic problems.

Working with the index

The Index pane's palette menu has several options useful in fine-tuning and generating the index:

Duplicate Topic lets you duplicate a topic entry so you use the settings in one entry without having to reselect them all.
Delete Topic removes a topic (and any associated entries) from the index.
Import Topics lets you import topic lists from other InDesign documents.
Go to Selected Marker causes InDesign to jump to the text that contains the selected index entry in the Index pane. This is a handy way of seeing if the reference in the text truly merits being listed in the index.
Topic Options lets you edit the Level and Sort By settings for topic entries; these affect all index entries that use them.
Capitalize lets you standardize the capitalization of topic entries ‚ you can choose Selected Topic, Selected Topic and All Subtopics, All Level 1 Topics, and All Topics.
Update Preview updates the index entries in the Index pane to reflect page-number changes, new occurrences of index text occurrences, and deleted occurrences of indexed text. It does not change the actual index.
Generate Index creates the actual index in your document, via the dialog box shown in Figure 9-9. Here, you specify the title for the Index, the paragraph style sheet for that title, whether a selected index is replaced with the new one, whether an entire book is indexed, whether layers on hidden layers are indexed, whether the index is nested or run-in (see the sidebar "Nested or run-in index?"), whether empty index headings and sections are included, what paragraph styles are applied to each level of index entry and what character styles are applied to different portions of index entries, and finally the characters used as separators within index entries. (Click the More Options button to see the nested/run-in and later options.) After you generate an index, you will get the standard InDesign text-insertion pointer (the paragraph symbol); click an existing text frame into which you want to flow the index, or click anywhere in a document to have InDesign create the text frame for you and flow the index text into it.

Figure 9-9: The Generate Index dialog box, with all options displayed.
Find lets you find text within the entries and topics in the Index pane ‚ it adds a Find field and ‚ (Search Forward) and ƒ (Search Backward) buttons to the Index pane.

Show Unused Topics highlights topics for which there are no index entries, so you can easily delete them.

Tip ‚

Each time you edit text in a document or book chapter, it's a good idea to rebuild the index so the page numbers in it are updated. There is no dynamic link between a flowed and formatted index and the index markers in text.

QuarkXPress User ‚

The InDesign index features are similar to those in QuarkXPress, though the InDesign Index pane and QuarkXPress Index palette are organized differently. (Furthermore, InDesign puts all its controls in the Index pane; there are no preferences to set in the Preferences dialog box as there are in QuarkXPress.)

Among the differences in functionality: QuarkXPress lets you automatically reverse the text in the Text field as you add it to the index. (For example, you can change Classic Science Fiction to Science Fiction, Classic. ) InDesign does not have this feature, nor does it have a shortcut command for quick index-entry additions as QuarkXPress does.

But InDesign has the ability to generate custom cross-reference text and to specify the capitalization for topics. InDesign can also show index entries for all chapters in a book, not just for the current chapter. (Although QuarkXPress can index an entire book, its Index palette can only show entries for the current chapter, which may lead to different index formatting and word choices from chapter to chapter.) InDesign also has more formatting options for index-entry text elements and separators.

Incorporating indexing into a workflow

If you're working on a document by yourself, or you're creating a fairly simple index in a workgroup, you can pretty much index as you go. Or you can plan some time at the end of the editorial cycle to go through a document or chapters to index them. But if your publication requires professional indexing ‚ as would be the case for the multilevel index of a long book such as this one ‚ deciding when to send your original InDesign files out for indexing is difficult. You might do it one chapter at a time, right after editorial approval and right before the file goes to production. Or you might send each chapter out for indexing before the last round of edits. What you can't do is continue working on one copy of your InDesign documents while another copy is being indexed ‚ there is no way to move the index tags to another file.

On a tight schedule, you may be tempted to move your InDesign documents into production while another copy of your files is indexed. You then generate the index, send that file to production, then send the whole thing to print. The index is trapped in InDesign documents that aren't final ‚ unfortunate, because the next time you edit the document, you would like to have the index tags in it. If you have to work this way, you'll need to decide whether to reindex the publication or redo the production work.