The previous Tools of the Trade posts have briefly discussed thesauruses, dictionaries, encyclopedias, style guides, and online resources including scholarly publications (such as databases), and have included some details about why those resources have made it into an indexer’s toolbox.

Side note: The first post on thesauruses also gives a quick overview of the More Resources for Writers page.

And now, to discuss the final major tool that is important to indexers: Software.

The First Technology

A short history of the index card was published in a 2016 issue of Popular Mechanics; it reviews how the invention of index cards came about and its application to library card catalogs.

Aside from the once-ubiquitous card catalog, index cards naturally found a place in the creation of book indexes. The course I took on indexing in library school had an assignment that involved using index cards as the method of recording and organizing index entries.

Each term would be recorded on a card, filed in alphabetical order, then transferred to the index document.

While technology has progressed beyond index cards, Nancy Mulvany, in chapter 10 of her seminal work, Indexing Books, suggests that the occasional indexer may be happier to take a break from the screen time, or simply not invest hundreds of dollars in a rarely used technology, and index the old-fashioned way. She also gives an explanation of how to go about indexing this way.

Current Technology

The format of these digital index cards is intuitive and easy to manipulate. There is definitely a learning curve, though, and I still do occasionally turn to the user manual for guidance on less-common actions.

Indexing software saves time by providing features where records can be flagged, grouped, and force-sorted, to facilitate the organization and presentation of the index.

Indexing programs typically provide features such as keywords and macros to simplify typing long, complicated, or frequently used strings. This allows the indexer to reduce to just a few keystrokes what would otherwise be a dozen or more.

Editing the index is infinitely easier with software, too. Spelling and other inconsistencies are resolved, headings can be easily combined or divided, and the sorting of those edited headings is seamlessly updated.

Cross references are a piece of cake to check — no circular cross references or dead ends need to make it to the final index, ever. And dangling subheadings are reconcilable, almost too easily; this feature specifically has backfired on me, and I have learned well the importance of keeping an updated back-up copy.

A Brief Listing of Indexing Software

There are many different programs that allow indexers and authors to simplify the mechanics of building and organizing a coherent index.

The software I use, a glimpse of which is shown above, is called Cindex. Macrex and Index Manager are two other dedicated indexing programs, but there are also some well-known names that include indexing among their features, such as InDesign and Microsoft Word.

*The sort feature in software is a tremendous time saver, but it is very important to not blindly trust the software, but to actually edit for proper alphabetical order. I usually do this as I edit for spelling.