Index (publishing)

An index (plural: indexes) is a list of words or phrases ('headings') and associated pointers ('locators') to where useful material relating to that heading can be found in a document. In a traditional back-of-the-book index the headings will include names of people, places, events, and concepts selected by a person as being relevant and of interest to a possible reader of the book. The pointers are typically page numbers, paragraph numbers or section numbers. In a library catalog the words are authors, titles, subject headings, etc., and the pointers are call numbers. Sourced I certainly think that the best book in the world would owe the most to a good index, and the worst book, if it had but a single good thought in it, might be kept alive by it. Horace Binney, To S. Austin Allibone; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 974. So essential did I consider an index to be to every book, that I proposed to bring a bill into Parliament to deprive an author who publishes a book without an index of the privilege of copyright, and, moreover, to subject him for his offense to a pecuniary penalty. John Campbell, 1st Baron Campbell, Lives of the Chief Justices of England (1874), Preface to Volume III. An index is a necessary implement. * * * Without this, a large author is but a labyrinth without a clue to direct the readers within. Thomas Fuller, Worthies of England (1662). The index tells us the contents of stories and directs to the particular chapters. Philip Massinger and Nathan Field, The Fatal Dowry (c. 1619, printed 1632), Act IV. Sc. 1. How index-learning turns no student pale, Yet holds the eel of science by the tail. Alexander Pope, The Dunciad (1728), Book I, line 279. That roars so loud and thunders in the index. William Shakespeare, Hamlet (c. 1600-1602), Act III, scene 4, line 53. And in such indexes, although small pricksTo their subsequent volumes, there is seen The baby figure of the giant mass Of things to come at large. William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), Act I, scene 3, line 343. Never index your own book. Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle (1963), Chapter 55. External links index Category:Themes