In this blog posting, I will discuss more characteristics of successful subheadings, based on an American Society for Indexing webinar given by Fred Leise on September 17, 2014.
Top 10 Characteristics
- collocation
- complete
- differentiable
- good information scent
- audience relevant
- concise
- points to information
- parallel construction
- important word first
- clear relationship to heading
In the last blog posting, I discussed in detail and gave examples of the first three characteristics: collocation, complete, and differentiable. In this blog posting, I will discuss in detail the next three characteristics.
Good Information Scent
Labels must provide users with a good information scent, a strong connotation so users can understand what type of material it points to. The second example has a better use of good information scent than the first example:
pomegranates
- about, 24
- cooking with, 26
pomegranates
- ancient Romans use of, 24
- cooking with, 26
Audience Relevant
Use glosses, short descriptions in parentheses, to help explain concepts to your audience. The second example is audience relevant:
Wakuenai
- dzudzuapani, 25,38-40,44,46
Wakuenai peoples (in Venezuela)
- dzudzuapani (“wheel” dance-songs), 25,38-40,44,46
Concise
Concepts should be concise, but this does not necessarily imply short. The second example shows a subheading that is concise:
Difference Engine (No. 2)
- building of as vindication and commemoration of Babbage’s work, 225,226
Difference Engine (No. 2)
- importance, 225,226
In the next blog posting, I will focus on the last characteristics of successful subheadings. For more information about the services provided by the author of this blog, see the Stellar Searches LLC website, http://www.stellarsearches.com
Tags: book indexing, indexing, subheadings