On Thu, Dec 23, 2004 at 08:13:13AM -0800, Rich Shepard wrote: > This is not LyX/LaTeX specific, but I know that a number of you have > published technical books with indices. Haven't found an answer to my > question despite having a professional indexer offer to help. Never got a > response from her. > > Here we go with the question setting: I've written a book on environmental > impact assessment and this string appears throughout the book. Question: > should the index contain a main item, "Environmental Impact Assessment"? > Probably not. If the entire book is about "environmental impact assessment" then it doesn't make sense having an index entry for it at all.
Unless, perhaps, you have a definition of the term in the beginning? Ask yourself questions like: 1. Is it likely that people will look for this particulat term in the index? In this case, it seems too broad. 2. Will they actually find the entry _useful_, if you make one? Surely, "e.i.a. see entire book" (or see these 34 different places) won't be useful. The index should be helpful - not necessarily _complete_. An index entry for a single page with a definition or introduction might make sense though. > After thinking about this quite extensively I belive the answer is, "no". > All the sub-item categories that could be listed under the main heading > (e.g., "Alternatives", "Subjectivity", "Baseline conditions") are in the > index as main headings so there's no reason to have a huge category with > many sub-items. > > Am I correct? Is there a correct answer? Sure - a single huge category is rarely good. If you already managed to get stuff into a single level - good! People are generally not that good at alphabetical search, and having to do it several times (in the top level index, not finding it there, then searching some subcategory) is annoying. And are you sure people would look for "baseline conditions" under "e.i.a." anyway? People always succeed with a single level. Multiple levels can be useful when the second level is short, and the sub-words are too generic for the main index. Example: Power - loss - management - structures Helge Hafting
