The Future of Indexing?

A recent article in the Society for Technical Communications' Intercom magazine proclaimed that indexing is on the rise (Seth Maislin, "The Indexing Revival," February, 2005), and that there is a renaissance of work in the field. But at the WritersUA March Conference, Microsoft's Longhorn features session declared that Longhorn's Help system will not contain an index, because "no one uses it." Then, to add to the discussion, at that same conference Apple revealed that their next help engine will include synonym rings and will add a form of indexing back into their display. Who's right? Who's correctly predicting the trends?

Wright, Jan C. WritersUA (2004). Articles>Indexing

Indexing in the Documentation Process: Which Methods Do You Choose?  

Giving your readers a quality index takes a careful consideration of the tools, time frame, workgroup process, and results you plan for the piece. Planning for the index must start at the beginning of the project, in order to have the essential processes clear to all involved As the documentation process itself becomes more complex, trying to meet different needs in different environments, so does indexing. As print-based documentation moves to online, the index or keywords becomes critical to your users. In this session, participants will learn what kinds of tools are available for indexing, the benefits of each, what the stages of indexing are, and the amount of time to allow for each.

Wright, Jan C. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Documentation>Indexing

An Overview of Indexing Methods  

Indexing is a mystery to many people who are writing and printing materials. An index is an offering to your readers - a way in to your material, a subject finder and a detailed guide to the contents of your piece. Indexing itself is a precise art, with not much real mystery when you get into it deeply.

Wright, Jan C. STC Indexing SIG (1998). Articles>Indexing>Methods