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Advanced Acrobatics: Tips and tricks for PDF mark-up—Adrienne Montgomerie (EAC conference 2014)

Are you still proofreading on paper? More and more clients are looking to do away with the printing and couriering costs associated with paper proofs and are asking proofreaders to mark up changes in PDF. Editor, trainer, and volunteer extraordinaire Adrienne Montgomerie showed us how to do this with the tools in the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. Their handout from their session is here, and they have also compiled a Storify of their session here. Both of these resources are probably more useful than this write-up, but I still wanted to share some of my main takeaways from the talk.

Acrobat (the Standard and Pro versions, which you have to pay for) does have an “edit” function, but that lets you make changes directly to the document. What we’re talking about here is mark-up: using the program’s drawing or annotation tools to mark up changes that have to be made to the native file. Because PDFs are a fixed format that look the same to everyone, they’re ideal for marking up not only proofs of print materials but also websites, presentations, YouTube videos, and anything else you can capture in a screen shot.

Montgomerie uses a stylus and a Wacom tablet, which some people may find more intuitive than a traditional mouse for marking up a proof. “I prefer PDFs to paper,” they said, “because I can blow up the proof to any size. I can move my marks and resize them. I can right-click on my marks and change their properties, including weight and colour.”

“I use in blue in my mark-up,” they continued, “because I think it’s less threatening.”

Two main ways of adding mark-up to a PDF are to use either the drawing tools, where you essentially use an e-pencil to directly emulate the proofreading mark-up you’d make on paper, or Acrobat’s own annotation tools (Comment & Markup), which track your insertions, deletions, replacements, and highlights. Drawing tools are especially handy for marking up graphic novels and screen shots, where the text may not be recognizable. Be aware that for layered text, text selection for the annotation tools isn’t perfect; sometimes Acrobat chooses the wrong layer.

You can add clarifications or instructions to the designer using the Callout tool. Before sending the proof back, you can run a spell check on all of your text boxes; designers can then copy and paste that text into the source file rather than risk introducing errors by rekeying.

Different designers have different preferences, so ask your clients what they’d prefer. Whichever method you choose, all of your changes will be logged in Acrobat’s Comments List. The Comments List is excellent for quality control (especially because some of the annotation mark-up can be hard to see):

  • A designer can check off the checkbox next to each comment once a change has been implemented.
  • You can sort the Comments List by page order, date entered, checkmark status, type, and reviewer. You can also show or hide certain types of comments.
  • If you’ve got only a handful of changes, you can print only those pages with changes, along with their comments, so that the designer doesn’t have to scan through the whole document.
  • The designer can also reply to each comment, allowing for two-way communication. Sometimes a change can’t be made, and the proofreader needs to know about it for the next round of proofing.

Through the Comment & Markup tools, you can also “Attach a File as a Comment,” which is useful for long inserts. Sometimes clients won’t notice these files, though, so Montgomerie will often send them as email attachments as well.

If you’re using the drawing tools, you can make your life easier by creating or downloading a set of stamps that have your most common proofreading marks. Each stamp comes up as one comment, so if you have a caret (^) plus a hyphen (=), say, the designer doesn’t have to wade through both marks as separate comments. (Mind you, if you manage to draw both in quick succession, Acrobat may recognize them as a single mark as well.)

Under the Select & Zoom tools is the Snapshot tool, which lets you isolate a portion of your page. You can also use it to print (File » Print » Print Selection/Selected Graphic) just those isolated sections—handy if you have a tabloid document but a letter-sized printer, for example.

I wondered if anyone had ever used Annotations for Adobe InDesign, which is a plugin that lets a designer accept or reject annotation changes that a proofreader has marked up in a PDF. Nobody in the room seemed to have used it, and I’m still curious about it. (Maybe InCopy has obviated this tool, but not everyone wants to buy or subscribe to InCopy.)

Enlighten others—and get paid for it: How to launch and run a training business—Graham Young (EAC conference 2014)

Graham Young has taught more than five hundred seminars on writing and public speaking, and at the EAC conference he shared some of his insights about the business of training others.

Should you start a training business? The pros and cons

“The number one reason to be a trainer? It beats working!” Young joked.

The benefits of running a training business are many: You’re helping people solve a problem, and you can change their lives. Once you leave the classroom, you’re not beholden to anyone. You don’t have to deal with bad bosses or eccentric coworkers, and you can tell well in advance what your schedule will look like. Training is also a great way to learn: “If you want to remember something, it’s best to say it aloud,” said Young. And if you’re already self-employed, adding training to your menu of services is easy.

Income from training, though, just as in any other self-employment situation, can be sporadic. It can get repetitive, and you might face quite a bit of competition.

How should you launch your training business?

If you decide that the pros outweigh the cons, Young suggests the following approach to launch your training business:

1. Pick a subject

Employment and Social Development Canada lists nine “essential” skills:

  1. Reading
  2. Writing
  3. Document use
  4. Numeracy
  5. Computer use
  6. Thinking skills
  7. Oral communication
  8. Working with others
  9. Continuous learning

Many employers are willing to pay for their employees to receive essential skills training.

2. Do a business case

Do some research on the competition, and figure out how your business would fit into the training landscape. Try to articulate how your business would fulfill an unmet need.

3. Choose a business structure

Should your business be a sole proprietorship, a partnership, or a corporation?

4. Select a business model

Should you work for yourself, for a training organization, or both?

If you work for yourself, you can charge as much as you’d like, you have to answer only to your clients, and you can update and change content to customize it for your clients. However, you’ll have to do all of your own marketing, respond to requests for proposals (RFPs) and handle contracts, and you might have to make all of your own arrangements for refreshments, printing, and AV equipment.

If you work for a training organization, you may have steadier work, someone else may take care of marketing and administrative tasks, and you might have the opportunity to add more courses to your portfolio. However, you may have to use someone else’s material that you can’t update, and the training organization may not share your professionalism.

You could get the best of both worlds by working for yourself and for an organization, but if you do, make sure you don’t compete directly with the organization, and be aware that any prospects you come across while teaching on behalf of an organization belongs to them.

5. Get qualified

If you’d like to start a training business, said Young, learn how adults learn. Young recommends The Art of Teaching Adults by Peter Renner.

Professional certifications can give you credibility, and real-world experience in the field you’re offering training for is a source of anecdotes that can help you turn a theoretical concept into something people can understand.

6. Cut your teeth

Gain confidence by speaking in front of a crowd. You might want to start out by teaching college courses or attending Toastmaster meetings.

7. Attend workshops

How do others teach, and how do you learn? Seeing how other training sessions are run can tell you what works and what doesn’t.

8. Find a mentor

If you can, find someone who has experience in training to guide you.

How should you run your training business?

Young encourages using the ADDIE model:

  1. Analyze
  2. Design
  3. Develop
  4. Implement
  5. Evaluate

Analyze

What problem is the training supposed to solve? (And is it really a lack of training that is causing the problem?) Who needs the training and why do they need training?

Understand that adult learners are autonomous, goal oriented, and knowledgeable. They want relevant information and solutions to their problems. “Adult learners come with certain expectations,” said Young. “Meet those expectations.” Otherwise you risk frustrating people.

Different people have different learning styles, so you should vary the way you present information to cater to different types of learners.

Design

Create a lesson plan, which should include the expected learning outcomes. Select the topics and content, drawing from personal experience, books, reports, journals, websites, social media, and interviews. Choose what teaching methods—lectures, demos, videos, discussions, exercises, role-plays, presentations—you’d like to use. Consider icebreakers or energizers to keep the participants engaged. Don’t forget to plan a strong closing, where you wrap up and summarize the key points.

Develop

Assemble the course material, including notes, exercises, and solutions. Balance theory with real-life examples. “When training,” said Young, it’s best to “show people examples in the context they’re familiar with.” Create your slides and other visual aids.

Try to limit class sizes to sixteen people, advised Young. In larger groups, you lose intimacy, and people are more reluctant to speak up.

Implement

Be prepared! At least a day ahead of time, confirm the location of the session, security arrangements, and AV requirements. Arrive at 45 to 60 minutes before your session starts so that you can set up. Always have a back-up of your presentation and notes. “Respect Murphy’s Law,” said Young. You may have to contend with double-booked rooms, missing manuals, malfunctioning AV equipment, or other problems.

Once the class starts, greet the participants and have people introduce themselves.

Establish your credentials and explain your role. Create a supportive environment, and be enthusiastic. “Be prepared to meet some great people,” said Young. (That said, some audiences may be hostile—maybe an employer sent them to a training session against their will—and you’ll have to adjust your training approach accordingly.)

If you don’t know the answer to a question, admit it—but follow up with one. See if any of the participants have the answer, and encourage participants to learn from one another.

Evaluate

Hand out evaluations at the end of your course, and adjust your course or delivery as needed. You may be able to use some of that feedback as testimonials, with permission.

Young closed with the top three things trainers must do to succeed:

3. Help solve the problem—whether it’s through imparting knowledge or honing a skill.

2. Instill confidence. “Behaviour is more likely to be predicted by what people believe they can do than by what they actually can do.”

1. Entertain. “If you haven’t got your audience’s attention, nothing else matters,” said Young.

Our changing language: When does wrong become right?—James Harbeck (EAC conference 2014)

“My head literally exploded.”

Does that sentence drive you crazy?

It reflects a change in the usage of “literally”—one that not everyone accepts. The history of English, though, is replete with examples of usages and syntax that were once considered wrong but that we now accept unthinkingly. “Our job as editors is to be bouncers at the door of our texts,” said James Harbeck. We have to decide which changes to our language to let in and which to keep out.

Language changes, said Harbeck, and we take part in that change. We can’t always predict or control how it will change, and we’re usually unaware of how it has changed in the past. Some people fall into what Harbeck calls the “etymological fallacy”—the belief that if a word used to mean something, that must be its true meaning.

Change happens at the word level—as we gain or lose words or parts of words or as words change in meaning or spelling—and at the syntactic level. (Language also changes at the sound level, but those changes don’t affect us as much in editing.) “Change at word level is like getting new books or rearranging them on a shelf,” said Harbeck. “Change to syntax is like rebuilding the shelves.”

Change comes through invention, borrowing, reinterpretation, or gradual shift. But why does it happen?

  • To make life easier: We often find new ways of expressing ourselves that take fewer words or syllables (e.g., “gonna” for “going to”) or that add clarity (e.g., “you all” for the plural “you”).
  • To feel better: “It’s fun,” said Harbeck. “We enjoy wordplay, clever slang, and cute turns of phrase.” We especially like borrowing words about food. “It’s like borrowing something else to eat,” said Harbeck. “Words go in your mouth, just like food.” Slang and jargon also help us build an in-group identity.
  • To control: Because our language use creates in-groups, we inevitably judge other groups based on their language, which can lead to class-based deprecation. “The poor raise pigs and cows; the rich eat porc and boeuf,” said Harbeck. Efforts to control our thoughts through marketing may also introduce new words and syntax into everyday speech. But “The most insidious kind of change is the change that pretends to be preserving the language against change,” Harbeck said. The grand prescriptivist “rules” that define “proper English” are all changes introduced in the last three centuries.
  • Things slip: Words can broaden, narrow, or shift in meaning. “Basic phonological processes can lead to reanalysis of word boundaries,” said Harbeck. And the people who introduce a language change may not be its vectors. For example, marketing invents while consumers carry.

How do we editors decide what to go with? Harbeck suggests we evaluate each situation as follows:

1. What is the change? Really?

Has a word leaped across a word-class boundary to become a different part of speech? Has its meaning changed? Its spelling? Try to pinpoint exactly what has shifted.

2. Where did it come from? When?

“The Oxford English Dictionary is honestly my favourite swimming pool,” said Harbeck. Use the OED online to trace the history of an innovation in English. You can also look at usage manuals, sites like the Language Log, and Google Ngrams, which can give you good historical information.

3. Where is it used? By whom?

Corpora such as the Corpus of Contemporary American English can give you information about collocations, and Google Ngrams can let you see what texts were using them when. Also refer to texts that are similar to the one you’re working on.

4. Who is your text for?

This is where register comes in. Are you writing for the business world? A magazine? A newspaper? An academic journal? Your Twitter followers? “When you’re deciding on register,” said Harbeck, “you’re really estimating your audience’s LCI—Linguistic Crustiness Index.” How will your audience receive and react to the usage?

5. What are the gains and losses?

When you use an expression like “most unique,” what are you gaining, and what are you losing? You are diluting absoluteness, but you may be gaining a way of expressing a quality that a synonym of “unique”—say, “unusual”—may not capture. If a change adds expressive power, it’s worth keeping.

Where is our language going? With the caveat that you can’t necessarily predict how it will change, Harbeck expects the following trends:

  • Greater flexibility in crossing word-class boundaries, which may start out as deliberate play but will seep through to everyday language.
  • Influence from second-language speakers. “Expect Chinese to have a perceptible effect,” said Harbeck.
  • Use of “they” in the singular. “Singular ‘they’ will prevail. The battle is over. They’re picking up the dead bodies right now,” Harbeck said. Expect a clarifying “they all” or “theys” to develop in parallel with “you all” and “youse.”
  • Acceptance of certain kinds of danglers as sentence adverbials.

Beyond the plain language edit—Claire Foley & Tracy Torchetti (EAC conference 2014)

Those of us who work in plain language are intimately familiar with the basic techniques that help us produce clear communications, including using:

  • common words familiar to the intended reader,
  • a conversational style that speaks directly to the audience,
  • active voice whenever appropriate,
  • short sentences,
  • lists,
  • a positive tone, and
  • an effective design that maximizes readability.

But do these techniques go far enough? At the Editors’ Association of Canada conference, plain language experts Claire Foley and Tracy Torchetti raised some specific issues to keep in mind if you aim to make your writing truly plain.

Audience

Using plain language means writing for your audience—but how well do you know them? If you’re writing for Canadians, be aware that:

  • 42% of adult Canadians have low literacy skills
  • 17% of the Canadian population are immigrants
  • 32% of Canadians don’t have English as a first language

As Foley said, “If you’re writing for Canadians, you are writing for ESL speakers.” And not only is Canada’s immigration population growing—so is its aging population. Your audience is diverse, and your communications will need to accommodate their needs, including those of people with different abilities.

Some text may be translated into Braille or sent through text-to-speech software, said Torchetti, and if the text has been clearly written in plain language, it is more likely to be rendered correctly. Otherwise you may end up with verbal gobbledygook.

Language

Writing for your audience means that plain language pushes the boundary of what is acceptable to those who are wedded to grammar. You have to be flexible if you want to craft a message that is appealing and relevant to your readers. When choosing between words, use the more common one; common words aren’t necessarily the shortest, but they’re the most familiar to the reader.

Contractions

Contractions are generally fine—they’re friendly, conversational, and engaging. However, Foley noted that some contractions are easier than others for readers to understand.

Easier contractions include:

  • I’m
  • can’t
  • don’t
  • you’re
  • who’s
  • what’s
  • where’s

Harder contractions include:

  • could’ve
  • will’ve
  • shouldn’t
  • isn’t
  • aren’t
  • weren’t
  • doesn’t
  • didn’t

Verb tenses

Stick to common verb tenses, such as the simple present and simple past. Try not to use other tenses, like the present progressive, in your plain language writing.

The present tense can work well for both present and future situations (for example, “I work tomorrow”), so if possible, eliminate the “will” and use the present.

Whenever possible, use regular rather than irregular verbs in the past tense. If you’ve got a choice between “talked” and “spoke,” for example, opt for the regular “talked,” whose –ed form is a clear cue to all readers that you’re using the past tense.

Phrasal verbs

Phrasal verbs, such as “give up,” “take over,” and “put off,” are idiomatic and aren’t well understood by well understood by audiences with limited English. Avoid these whenever possible.

Punctuation

Good punctuation matters to clear communication, said Torchetti, but use punctuation minimally.

“Any extra punctuation adds clutter to a page,” she said. You can eliminate a lot of that clutter and add clarity simply by avoiding abbreviations like “e.g.” “Besides, said Torchetti, “that’s an abbreviation of a Latin phrase, and Latin has no place in plain language. Period.”

Particularly fussy punctuation marks that you should avoid include:

  • the colon,
  • the semicolon,
  • the asterisk,
  • the ellipsis,
  • footnote symbols, and
  • parentheses.

Struggling readers don’t really understand the function of the colon, so try not to use it in running text. However, most readers now expect a colon to introduce a list, so, even if it’s not grammatically correct, you should include it.

“Banish the semicolon from plain language,” said Torchetti. “Semicolons are a good indication that you should be changing one sentence into two.”

Most people don’t read text in parentheses and, if they do, they can’t easily see its relationship with the rest of the sentence.

Formatting and presentation

“It’s not plain if you’ve just taken care of the text,” said Torchetti.

Struggling readers have trouble navigating a page, whether printed or online, and they can’t scan large chunks of text. Break up the text into shorter paragraphs, with plenty of white space on the page, and use meaningful titles, headings, and subheadings, which serve as signposts to guide readers. For those headings, though, use sentence case rather than title case, which can be hard to read.

Choose your fonts carefully: script fonts, for example, are hard to read, and older readers need at least a 14-point type size to read comfortably.

The layout should make the information easy to find and use. Visuals should make concepts easier to understand: illustrations that are metaphorical will confuse struggling readers, so make your images informative.

For online information, make it easy for people to navigate and go back. Avoid putting too much information on a page, and make links obvious. In the name of elegance, too many websites now make their links too hard to discern from the rest of text.

Foley and Torchetti recommend Access Ability: A Practical Handbook on Accessible Graphic Design for tips on effective design for audiences with different abilities.

Readability

For a general audience in Canada, readability best practice is to aim for an average reading level of grade 8 for print and grade 6 to 8 for web, although you should adjust your reading level based on the subject matter and context.

Readability formulas, such as the Fry readability formula or the Flesch–Kincaide readability test, can be useful, but, Torchetti cautions, understand their limitations. They each measure only five to ten factors, when readability is based on about a hundred factors. How readability tests can be really useful is as tools to educate clients and to persuade them of what needs to be done to the text to make it clearer.

Faster editing: Using PerfectIt to check consistency and house style—Daniel Heuman (EAC conference 2014)

I’d heard only good things about PerfectIt, the consistency-checking software, but I work on a Mac and didn’t want to run Parallels, so I’ve resisted buying it. Still, I wanted to attend developer Daniel Heuman’s EAC conference talk about the software so that I could learn more about what it can and can’t do.

PerfectIt, by Intelligent Editing, is an add-on to Microsoft Word for PCs, and it runs from the toolbar or ribbon. It’s a consistency checker that alerts you to inconsistencies in your text. These alerts don’t prescribe—it’s quite possible that what PerfectIt flags is all correct. “There are exceptions to every rule,” said Heuman, “so PerfectIt does make you slow down and evaluate each situation.”

PerfectIt will find inconsistencies in:

  • hyphenation. Although right now the software only works for open versus hyphenated compounds, Heuman says that checking for open versus closed versus hyphenated is “on the list” of future improvements.
  • numbers. It will alert you if you’ve deviated from your style and used numerals where you should have spelled out a number, and vice versa. It will not, however, find inconsistencies in the use of a comma or a nonbreaking space in a numeral (e.g., 5,000 versus 5000 versus 5 000).
  • spelling. Not only will it catch “adviser” versus “advisor,” but it will also flag usage inconsistencies, such as “preventive” versus “preventative.” Embarrassing errors that a spell check wouldn’t catch—such as using “pubic” instead of “public” or “mange” instead of “manage”—are also programmed to pop up on a PerfectIt scan.
  • abbreviations. Have you defined an abbreviation? Have you continued to spell it out once it has been defined? PerfectIt will also let you generate a table of abbreviations. (Heuman’s demonstration of this feature prompted a lot of oohs and aahs.) However, the software will not detect inconsistent use of full caps versus small caps.
  • capitalization. PerfectIt will alert you to inconsistencies such as “parliament” versus “Parliament.” It will also check for consistency in header cases—a good reason to use Word’s styles to define your headers.
  • lists. PerfectIt will flag inconsistencies in capitalization and punctuation in lists—but only those styled as lists in Word. It won’t work with manually inserted bullets, for example.

For each potential error that PerfectIt finds, a dialog box pops up that describes the inconsistency; shows you how many cases of each form you have in the document and allows you to choose your preferred form; shows an excerpt of text around each instance of the error, letting you fix each case individually or all of them at once; and states any exceptions to the rule or special considerations in a note box at the bottom.

I asked if PerfectIt could be told to ignore block quotes or text style as quotations. Heuman told me that it will respect the “Do not check spelling and grammar” checkbox, but only after you’ve gone into the advanced settings and told it to, specifically.

PerfectIt will not check grammar, nor will it check references.

One feature that makes the software particularly powerful is the ability to create a style sheet for each client or to import an existing style guide, such as ones from the WHO, UN, EU, or The Economist. PerfectIt can then check your text against the selected style sheet and flag any deviations from it. If you’ve created a style sheet and would like to share it with a client or colleague, it’s easy to export it and send it along.

For those of us who don’t have a PC and aren’t using Parallels, Intelligent Editing does offer an online consistency checker, but it is a “shadow of the full suite.” My fingers are crossed that one day, PerfectIt will be available for Mac users. It does seem to be a powerful time saver, and I imagine that future tweaks to its functionality will only make it better.

Indexer–author relations—Enid Zafran (ISC conference 2014)

Enid Zafran is a past president of American Society for Indexing and served on its national board for over six years. Among the books she has co-edited are Starting an Indexing Business, Index it Right! Advice from the Experts, and a couple of titles in the Indexing Specialties series, including one about legal texts and one about scholarly works. In 2010, Zafran’s contribution to the indexing profession was recognized with the Hines Award from the ASI. That same year, she became a certified indexer with the Institute of Certified Indexers.

Zafran runs the business Indexing Partners, which has clients ranging from academic presses, professional and textbook publishers, nonprofit associations, and authors. At the Indexing Society of Canada conference, she drew on more than thirty years of experience to tell us a bit about how to main good indexer–author relations.

Her talk focused on the times the indexer interacts directly with the author, as opposed to a publisher. These clients may have publishers who have asked them to find an indexer, or they may be self-publishing. “Self-publishing authors need a lot of hand holding,” said Zafran. They may be caught off guard by what’s involved in the indexing process, as well as how much it costs.

When an author first approaches you to do an index, ask for details of the job, including topic, word or page count, schedule, length limits on the index, and, if they’re working with a publisher, the publisher’s style. Ask to see some sample chapters before you commit; knowing the title and word count of a book may not be enough to tell you how dense the text will be and how much indexing it will need.

If an author supplies you with a list of terms, Zafran suggests including them in the index as a matter of course and importing them directly into your indexing software. “It’s easier to be agreeable and accept author lists,” she said. Further, when discussing a potential job with an author, “express some enthusiasm,” said Zafran. The author has put a lot of time into writing the book, and as indexer, you’re one of its first readers. A little enthusiasm goes a long way to establishing a good working relationship.

When discussing schedules and deadlines, explain your process and stress that you’ll need to work from final pages. Be sure to build in time for the author to review the index. Zafran tells her clients that her fee covers two hours of editing; additional changes would be charged by the hour.

This is also a good time to see if the project is big enough to warrant breaking it down into several milestones, both for author review and for payment. Zafran will sometimes ask a new client for a 25 per cent deposit before the job begins. “If they’re not willing to pay, you might have trouble getting money later,” she said. Zafran expects payment within thirty days of invoicing and charges a 16 per cent late fee. For rush jobs, she also charges a rush premium fee. Having worked with academics on scholarly books, she warned us about universities, which may require you to be registered with the them as a vendor. If you invoice without being registered, your payment could be delayed.

If the author is overseas, the bank may charge for a wire transfer. Inform clients that you’ll be adding that fee from the wire transfer to your invoice.

Once you firm up the job with the client, make sure you have written confirmation where they agree to the terms. Stay in touch before the job begins to make sure everything is still on schedule.

When indexing starts, explain to the author that you’ll need to go away and work—and tell them when you’ll have an index ready for them to review. “‘Can I see a draft?’ is one of the most dreadful things you can hear an author say,” quipped Zafran. No matter how much you try to explain that the draft is not the final index, the author will always have some reason to be unhappy with it.

When it comes time for the author to review the finished index, Zafran said that if she’s had good relations with the author thus far, she’ll send them both the indented and run-in styles. At this stage, four common complaints may surface:

1. The index doesn’t have all of the names I had in my book.

You’ll have to explain to the author that, in standard indexing practice according to the Chicago Manual of Style, names in front matter, acknowledgements, and notes aren’t included in the index. “With authors, when you cite the Chicago Manual, the discussion is over. You’ve invoked the word of God,” joked Zafran.

2. The index doesn’t pick up every occurrence of a term.

Zafran suggests using Sherry Smith’s term of “lesser mention” to explain why a term wasn’t indexed rather than the harsher “passing mention.” Also explain that an index differs from a concordance and that the indexer’s job is to lead users to substantive, helpful information.

3. Sometimes the index uses cross-references for acronyms; sometimes there are page numbers. Why the inconsistency?

Explain that entries with only one or two page numbers warrant double-posting rather than cross-referencing. Double-posting saves the user time, whereas cross-referencing saves space. With only one or two locators, there is no net space savings.

4. The topic of the book is barely indexed.

As tempting as it is to respond with, “Well then the whole book would indexed under that one heading, so what good would that be?” you’re more likely to get a favourable reaction if you explain “how the metatopic merits special treatment in the index,” said Zafran. Today, it’s considered a best practice to mirror the book’s chapter and subchapter structure under the metatopic heading, and most authors appreciate that this approach reflects the way they’ve dealt with the topic in the book.

***

Once you’ve submitted the index to the author’s satisfaction, send an invoice that includes the due date and a reminder of your late fee. Zafran will waive that fee if the client is only a bit late or is making a clear effort to comply. Make sure you have distinct numbers for each invoice—otherwise some clients (like universities) may not process payment. Once a payment is overdue, start calling. The client may not answer, but seeing you on call display may be enough to remind them that they owe you money. Finally, said Zafran, don’t be afraid to assert your copyright on your index to prompt late payers to pay.

If a job has gone well, remind the client that your business is built on word-of-mouth referrals and ask them to recommend you to other authors who could use your help.

Indexing a moving target: Ontario Hansard’s approach (ISC conference 2014)

Rosalind Guldner, Cheryl Caballero, and Erica Smith work together to produce the index for the Ontario Hansard, the official record of the province’s legislative assembly and its standing committees. Their team recently won the Web & Electronic Indexing SIG Award for excellence in web site indexing, and at the ISC conference, they shared their insights on team indexing approaches, indexing a constantly changing and growing text, and adapting to the demand for electronic indexes.

The Hansard is a serial: the House sits Monday through Thursday, and House debates have to be transcribed, edited, and proofed within twenty-four hours. The index and research group aren’t quite on such tight timelines—they have to produce final speaker and subject indexes only after the session ends—but they do index and edit as they go and also help the Hansard team with fact checking and other research. The index is bilingual, but the Hansard is transcribed and indexed in the language spoken only.

The team has found that assigning one primary indexer and editor to each index (one for the House debates and one for the committees) yields the best consistency. They also keep a subject authority list to help standardize their headings and subheadings. This list grows continually and changes as heading terms go in and out of style. For example, whereas MPPs (Members of Provincial Parliament) used to say “physicians,” they’re more likely today to say “doctors.”

The House index is based on the transcripts of debates about bills, oral questions, members’ statements, and statements by the ministry, and the indexer faces a number of challenges. First, Question Period is fast paced, and there isn’t always enough time to provide context, so the indexer must constantly keep on top of current events to know what’s being discussed. Second, the content can be unpredictable: because nobody knows when the session will end, non-substantive content now may later resurface as substantive content, so it’s hard to know how specific to go with subheadings. Third, people read the Hansard to determine legislative intent, so indexers must provide several alternative access points to the information. Finally, indexers have to maintain neutrality. The transcript is substantially verbatim and editors are restricted from sense making, but MPPs go off topic constantly and are often crafty about using language that is only tenuously related to the topic.

The committee indexer works with transcripts from standing committees and select committees. Sometimes committees are given special mandates, and occasionally the committees will hear from witnesses. Although witness statements are recorded and transcribed, they are not indexed; only members’ questions and reactions are indexed. The committee indexer will often use the House index as a guide, although the subject matter can be discussed in finer detail, so the committee index may have more headings or subheadings.

The Hansard indexing team is constantly editing their index, issuing daily updates to the online House index and twice-weekly updates to the online committee index. Once the session ends, they do a final “big picture” edit before producing final print and online versions of their indexes. The print versions are sent to depository libraries all over the world.

The Hansard is still printed on paper, as it’s used as a legal record, and paper indexes have been used since 1949. For the past dozen years or so, the indexing team at the Ontario Hansard have also provided an online index. They use HTML/Prep and Webprep to convert indexes created in CINDEX to HTML. Right now there’s no tagging yet—the locators link to the top of a page, and the user has to use search function on that page to find what they need.

In the future, the team hopes to tag content directly; create a linked, tagged index to audio or video content; and provide “live” headings, where they listen live during the debate and provide quick access to popular content such as oral questions and members’ statements. They also aim to expand their role, spotlighting their indexing skills and reference resources to create useful reference lists, and maybe one day to index other assembly content, including the Members’ Guide and the Standing Orders (rules of Parliament).

Indexing in Adobe InDesign Creative Cloud—Judy Dunlop (ISC conference 2014)

Thanks to the advocacy efforts of the American Society for Indexing’s Digital Trends Task Force and the International Digital Publishing Forum’s Indexes Working Group, Adobe has heard the pleas of indexers to allow embedded indexing in InDesign to output linked indexes. In the Creative Cloud version, launched June 2013, InDesign can generate a linked index in multiple digital formats, including PDF, EPUB, and HTML.

The Indexing Society of Canada’s Judy Dunlop has done one project using the new Creative Cloud workflow, and she gave us an overview of what she learned through that experience. Dunlop had almost exclusively done back-of-the-book indexing for scholarly clients but decided to venture into digital index a couple of years ago. She took InDesign indexing workshops offered by Jan Wright and Lucie Haskins, and trained herself on InDesign through tutorials on Lynda.com.

For indexers and publishers to work together on an embedded index in InDesign, said Dunlop, they need to use the same version. The Creative Cloud version is the only one that produces linked indexes from the embedded tags, and it is available by subscription only, so an indexer who doesn’t ordinarily have to use InDesign can easily subscribe to the program for a month, then cancel the subscription once the project is over.

In a typical workflow, the publisher would supply the indexer with the live InDesign files that have been edited and proofread. The indexer may embed tags directly in the InDesign file or create an index first in dedicated indexing software (such as CINDEX, SKY Index, or Macrex) then convert the locators into markers using a script available through Kerntiff Publishing Systems. InDesign’s index entries don’t include italics, bold, or decorations such as n for “note,” so the designer has to apply those styles manually. Every time the indexer revises the live file, the publisher has to regenerate the index and reapply special styles. Good communication—directly between designer and indexer—is key, said Dunlop. Designers who have traditionally been given a static index to typeset won’t be used to the process of regenerating and reformatting the index.

Many publishers will not have tried this workflow. Some haven’t yet moved to Create Cloud because of subscription costs. Further, many of them will be reluctant to relinquish control of their live files. As the indexer, if you are allowed to work with the live files, you have to be particularly careful not to make any inadvertent changes to them. (It’s theoretically possible to tag in Word and import into InDesign, but, Dunlop said, that feature is buggy and is generally not recommended.)

Allegedly, said Dunlop, you don’t need the publisher’s fonts to do the index, but on her project she found that the font mismatch caused problems. If the publisher offers you fonts, take them.

So far, Dunlop has found that force sort, indented vs. run-in style, and multiple levels of headings are features that work well in InDesign. However, the program doesn’t seem to handle cross-references well: not only are they not linked, but multiple cross-references are not rendered in the usual style (e.g., “See also Vancouver, BC. See also Kelowna, BC” rather than the preferred “See also Kelowna, BC; Vancouver, BC”), and generic cross-references have to be manually italicized. As mentioned, the designer also needs to apply special formatting, such as italics, bold, and decorated page numbers.

Because cross-references aren’t linked, Dunlop suggests double-posting instead. She also advocates being as succinct as possible, because long entries create unsightly breaks in EPUBs.

The linked-index functionality in InDesign Creative Cloud is so new that “everyone is learning,” said Dunlop. Publishers, editors, designers, and indexers will need to work together to figure out a system that works well for them. “Experiment—you’re not going to know what you’re going to get until you try it—then learn from your mistakes,” said Dunlop. Once you’ve got one project under your belt, you’re already in a better position than most and can share what you’ve learned with others.

If you have a client who is reluctant to try the workflow, Dunlop suggested that you offer to create an embedded index for a backlist title that still sells well and is available as an ebook. The risk to the publisher is lower than for a frontlist title with a tight deadline, and you can help them become familiar with the new indexing process.

Health and science indexing tips and hints—Mary Russell (ISC conference 2014)

Mary Russell, representative from the Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers, gave us a glimpse into her bag of tricks for indexing health and science texts.

“If you wear an editor’s hat,” she warned, “you’ll have to get comfortable sitting on your hands.” The terminology in health and science can be quite daunting, with eponyms, an idiosyncratic mix of British and American spelling, chemical names, drug names, botanical names, and so on. Medicine and science are full of alternative names, abbreviations, and precise distinctions between categories of varying complexity. You’ll have to use more cross-references and know your audience so that you can guide your readers to the terms preferred in the text.

Eponyms—diseases or body parts named after a person or place—are common in medicine and can be tricky because punctuation and possession can be lost. (Should it be “Braxton Hicks contractions” or “Braxton-Hicks contractions”?) Double-check with an authoritative source to get these right.

The use of British versus American spellings may also seem inconsistent; a book published in the U.S. may use British spelling because that’s what the profession uses. “Follow the profession,” said Russell, “not necessarily the nationality of your audience.”

Chemicals can have many alternative names—for example, vinegar can be known as a dilute solution of acetic acid, ethanoic acid, glacial acetic acid, among other names. If you have room in your index, offer your readers the most common of these as multiple access points.

Drug names “can get frightfully complicated,” said Russell. “Drug names really test your typing, because they simply do not make sense.” Drugs have a class name, a drug group, a drug name, and a trade name. It’s important to provide as many of these as possible in the index, because people may be looking up drug names and side effects in a crisis situation, and your index is the entry point.

For scientific names, classification to the level of genus and species is usually all that’s needed. Plant names are very structured, but common names and cultivars can add confusion. Although sometimes you may see zoological names inverted (species, genus), don’t do that with botanical names.

Resources

If you’re working in health and science indexing, you can turn to several different types of resources to guide you and help you understand terminology and conventions.

Dictionaries and thesauri

Specialized subject dictionaries are great resources. Sometimes they’re available as an app, which may be cheaper to buy than the print edition—or you can get a short-term subscription for your project.

For medicine, refer to the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s medical subject headings (MeSH). MeSH terms can clarify the hierarchy of terms, alert you to alternative terms, help with alternative spellings, help with politically correct terms, and clarify the use of abbreviations.

Style guides

Russell recommended the following style guides:

Name authorities and taxonomies

Many scientific areas have authorities that can be consulted online:

People

Get to know indexers who also work in science and medicine, and talk to subject experts, perhaps the work’s author or editor, to get a handle on the terminology that the audience is likely to look for.

Ten principles for creating better indexes—Margie Towery (ISC conference 2014)

Margie Towery, two-time winner of the American Society for Indexing’s award for excellence in indexing, not to mention an indexer of The Chicago Manual of Style, treated Indexing Society of Canada conference-goers to a three-hour seminar covering ten principles for creating better indexes.

An index, said Towery, should

  • help readers find specific information faster
  • have an easy-to-use structure
  • reflect the text
  • provide multiple entry points.

Indexing is both an art and a science; when we choose what to index, we rely on reason, experience, and intuition. To create better indexes,

1. Consider your audience

Who are the readers, what are their expectations, and what terminology might they look for? Towery suggests getting familiar with terminology by referring to

  • subject dictionaries
  • similar books
  • the author’s previous works
  • the author’s website
  • the press website
  • online searches on the topic

Also refer to the book’s table of contents and introduction, as well as the author’s concept list, if it’s offered. Some indexers refuse to work with an author’s concept list, a position Towery doesn’t understand. To her, it’s easier just to include those terms in the index and keep the author happy.

Add cross-references as soon as you see the opportunity—for example, if the author mentions using two terms interchangeably.

For a long project, Towery encourages immersing yourself completely in the subject, using other books, movies, music, and art.

2. Consider the metatopic

How to treat the metatopic can be controversial among indexers. Towery believes that the metatopic main heading is a keystone to the index and can be a teaching tool, as new users may naturally want to start looking in the metatopic.

A good approach may be to begin with a table of contents structure that points readers to the main headings that will let them find what they need. You may also find mind mapping helpful; there are apps that can turn a mind-map into an outline for you.

Refer to the “indexing” heading in Hans H. Wellisch’s Indexing from A to Z for an example of a metatopic done well.

3. aim for accuracy

  • Ensure the terms accurately reflect the text (more on that later) and are spelled correctly.
  • If you’re providing dates for events or years for legal cases, make sure those are accurate.
  • Disambiguate similar names—e.g., Smith, John (dentist); Smith, John (doctor).
  • Don’t allow subheadings to make adjectives of main headings.
  • Cross-references have to be accurate and consistent, in spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.
  • Triple-check accuracy of double-postings.
  • Make sure your page locators are accurate—not only that they point to the right pages but also that they are of the right type. Should 2, 3 be 2–3? Are the locators correctly formatted according to press style?

4. Aim for comprehensiveness

“In best-case scenarios,” said Towery, “every index would be comprehensive—that is, it includes all substantive information and provides multiple ways of finding the information.” In reality, however, we face space, time, and wage limitations, so the key is to achieve balance. Indexers have to consider the many ways a user might “name” and search for something.

5. Aim for conciseness

Encapsulate meaning in as few words as possible: avoid using a fifteen-letter word when a five-letter one means the same thing. Balance jargon with everyday language. (Although clarity, reflexivity, accuracy, and audience issues are equally important.)

In some cases, conciseness may trump specificity (for example, if the heading “railroad development” has only two locators and “railroads” only one, you might want to combine them under one heading.)

6. Aim for consistency

Topics of equal weight in the text should be treated similarly in the index, both in depth and specificity. Do they have similar numbers and types of locators and subheadings?

Also ensure that you have consistency in

  • cross-references (Are cross-references from similar entries—e.g., initialisms—treated the same way?)
  • formatting details (e.g., does the text use the serial comma? Where are you placing your cross-references?)
  • structure (i.e., headings should be parallel)

Finally, said Towery, don’t be afraid to be consistently inconsistent. In some situations, you have to bend rules for headings of a certain type. Just ensure that all of the headings in that category are treated the same way, and you won’t confuse your readers.

7. Aim for clarity

“The relationship between the main and the subheading must be instantly obvious,” said Towery. “Indexers shouldn’t have to figure out what’s meant.” That’s why function words like as, of, by, and so on, are so critical. “They should not be used willy-nilly,” said Towery, “but to clarify the main–subheading relationship.” Towery also cautioned that a phrase like “influence of” can be ambiguous. Be clear by specifying “influence on” or “influence by.”

Keep in mind that “words reverberate neurolinguistically differently in different people,” said Towery. Choose between terms like terrorists and revolutionaries carefully, keeping in mind that the headings should reflect the text but also help readers find what they need.

Names may benefit from glosses to clarify who they are or what their relationship is to key players in the text.

Towery also challenges us to “love the alphabet: use the alphabet not only to keep the most important word in front but also to keep logic in the subheadings whenever possible.” Fortunately, birth comes before death in the alphabet, but illness comes after death. You might need to get creative with your wording or force sort for chronology.

8. Aim for readability

Check out Susan Olason’s “Let’s get usable! Usability studies for indexes” article in The Indexer. The article notes that commas can be confusing, especially for reversals, and that table of contents–styled entries and indented formatting is more user friendly. Interestingly, Caroline Diepeveen mentioned research in the Netherlands that showed run-in subheadings are easier to read. Towery suspects that may be because run-in subheadings force indexers to be clearer and more succinct. Indented styles work better with technical texts; run-in may work better for narratives.

Towery noted the need to chunk information to accommodate the fact that we can keep only a few bits of information in short-term memory at a time.

Don’t use old indexing devices like ff. and passim., which most readers don’t understand.

Tips for readability overlap considerably with the other principles for creating better indexes:

  • Use a visible metatopic structure.
  • Include parallel structure where appropriate.
  • Be consistent in the treatment of topics.
  • Be sure the relationships between main and subheadings are unambiguous.
  • Place the most important word first in the subheadings whenever possible.
  • Avoid jargon, especially in subheadings.
  • Use the alphabet for logical progressions.
  • Clarify subheading meanings with function words.
  • Consider clumping and gathering similar subheadings.
  • Sort out long entries into more approachable chunks.
  • Avoid inversions whenever possible.

Although Olason found that indented styles were more readable, they also have their own problems. If a series of subheadings start with the same function word (e.g., on), they can create what Towery calls “gridlock” or eyeball barriers. Reword the subheading if needed to prevent this problem.

Towery also cautions that our training and work have biased our thought process. We may not be objective about what makes an index usable. If you can, show your index to someone else, a reader who can provide more unbiased feedback.

9. Aim for reflexivity

“An index should reflect the text from which it comes,” said Towery. “The index internalizes the text. But it’s not simply a regurgitation of the text in alphabetical order.” Indexers digest books to create an approachable alphabetical and structured index from the text.

Reflexivity also applies to the tone that characterizes the text. However, Towery says that an index doesn’t need to carry forward the author’s biases. Use neutral headings and subheadings to point to the text, where the author’s voice and opinions can take over.

10. Use common sense

Use natural, everyday language whenever possible. Make sure that the index makes sense to all of its possible audiences and that it’s usable by a variety of people. Again, sometimes you need to break the “rules”—with experience, you’ll get a better sense of when and how you should overrule standard practices to make a better index.

Read other indexes and critically evaluate how well they work, why, and what could be done differently. To evaluate what makes a good index, use the American Society for Indexing’s checklist for its excellence in indexing award.

***

Beyond these ten principles, Towery emphasizes the need for

  • cross-training: “Keep indexing skills fresh by learning other related skills,” she said. She finds that trying to summarize a book in a haiku helps her distill the text into its essence and achieve the precision and conciseness that an index needs.
  • napping: It’s scientifically proven to increase alertness, boost creativity and the ability to see connections, strengthen memory, clarify decision making, and improve productivity. Towery suggests reading Sara Mednick’s Take a Nap!

For an eye opener, Towery recommends reading What Is an Index?, a book Henry Wheatley wrote back in 1878 that discussed a lot of the same issues we are dealing with today.