All this talk about indexing and I seem to have skipped directly addressing the most fundamental and crucial element: the metatopic!

Related Blog Posts

Previous blog posts, The What & Why of Indexes discusses what an index is, and the role of indexers, & Anatomy of an Index discusses the components and structure of indexes.

For all posts tagged with “metatopic,” look here.

The Metatopic

The metatopic is essentially the overall subject of the book.

What does that mean for indexing?

“The metatopic is the structural center of the index: every single heading you create will be implicitly related to it.”
— Stauber, p.9

First Thing’s First

Do Mi Stauber devotes the entire first chapter of her book to the issue of metatopics, and in that chapter, she states that books may have simple, complex, or double metatopics.*

Considering the fact that all the terms in the index relate in some way to the metatopic, its use as a main heading should, in general, be limited to only those terms that cannot stand alone as main headings. This prevents the problem of having an overwhelming number of subheadings under the metatopic heading.

It is also possible that a book might have what Stauber calls an “invisible” metatopic, that is, a metatopic that does not appear in the index as a main heading at all; this does not indicate negligence on the part of the indexer, nor does it change the metatopic’s relation to index entries.

In the case of multi-authored works, each chapter will have its own main topic that relates to the overall metatopic.

The indexer has the responsibility of determining the metatopic treatment — and as a result, the index structure — that makes the most sense and is most helpful to the reader.

Something to Keep in Mind

Although an indexer may not identify the exact metatopic until the index is halfway (or more) complete, it is something that should be kept in mind from the first moment that the document is opened, even before any indexing has occurred.

Keeping the metatopic in mind as I index influences every decision I make.

Most of the books I have indexed have had reasonably straightforward titles and subtitles which convey the metatopic of the book. Sometimes, a thesis statement found in the introduction may seem important enough that I record it in my notes to keep in mind as I index or continue reading, along with the title. By the time I’ve gone through the book once, the metatopic has usually morphed or condensed to a simple phrase that translates into a main heading-appropriate term. Stauber mentions going through the same kind of ordeal herself, and it’s safe to say that I learned it from studying her book.

In every project so far, by the time I start editing the index — and usually long before then — I have identified the concise phrase that can be considered the heart of the text and the backbone of the index: the metatopic.

*Note: this discussion does not consider metatopic treatment in biographies.

Stauber, Do Mi. Facing the Text: Content and Structure in Book Indexing. Eugene, OR: Cedar Row Press, 2004.