Days, months or years after you have studied a valuable textbook, you remember it said something about a topic you now need the details on for a task you are working on.  You go to the textbook.  You are pretty sure it is in Chapter 6, but Chapter 6 is 155 pages long.  Obviously, you don't have time now to re-study Chapter 6.  And is it really in Chapter 6?  How are you going to find what you are looking for in the time that you have?  You remember the section you are looking for mentions something specific that is not likely to be mentioned anywhere else in the book.  You go to the Index and search for that term.  There it is!  It has 2 page numbers listed, and one of lists a phrase that is connected with the topic you are looking for.  You go to that page number.  There it is!  It wasn't in Chapter 6!  And it only took a minute to find it.  Now you're back to your task, now armed with the information you needed.

 

That was all made possible because some person or persons created an index that was thorough enough to have listed the term you remembered, and as well, listed a phrase that connected that term with the topic you were seeking.  You didn't have to re-read or carefully scan Chapter 6 only to find twenty minutes later that you still hadn't found what you were looking for.  You didn't have to call your professor who taught that class to ask him or her.  You found it on your own, and it only took a minute.

 

Let's say some day YOU are the author of a large work -- something that covers many topics and details which people will want to refer back to from time to time.  How do you create such an index so that they can easily find what they are looking for?

 

Or let's say you are hired by a company that is about to publish a large reference manual, or theory-of-operation guide for a product that is about to hit the market, and the boss comes to you and asks you to create an index for it.  What do you do?

 

This article provides the how-to for building that index.

 

This is not a common task, but done well, it is worth its weight in gold for the readers who will use, and refer back to, your reference document.