How can I build a better index?

It’s not too early to start planning for a comprehensive and well-designed index.

If you didn’t use HJ Index Builder last spring, check it out now. Don’t allow any staffer to waste time (or risk repetitive movement injury) tagging names for inclusion. And don’t worry about the hassle of booking your pages to be able to index around software constraints. This Herff Jones-only tool makes an accurate index easy to achieve.

While HJ Index Builder makes the process easier than ever before, the best indices will require some additional work.

The index should be a complete listing of every person, team, club, topic and advertiser in the yearbook. While it’s helpful to have all student names (which is where a less-than-complete index stopped in the past), that does not help the readers who are looking for a Student Council member whose name they can’t remember or something that happened at an NHS meeting.

Sometimes we’ll see a separate index for the faculty or the advertisers, but that’s really not what’s most reader-friendly. One complete listing is simply easier to use than any other format.

Using HJ Index Builder, you can include spread topics by having the folios read Homecoming Week rather than Homecoming and Varsity Wrestling rather than Wrestling. (i.e. two words rather than one)

Even if you decide not to use two-word folios, you will be able to add in all other entries and their corresponding page numbers after you have run the HJ Index Builder. After you flow the index onto templates to submit the pages, you can use the style palettes to format the entries themselves and the letters that divide them.

At that point, the text is already flowed into InDesign, so adding new entries is as easy as typing them in.

And don’t forget, especially if you have rearranged the content of your book into non-traditional sections, that the readers might want to be able to search by sections as well. It might be helpful to create a mini-index listing for the sports and clubs sections.

In addition to the contents and construction, there are a number of considerations that set the best-planned and executed index apart from the others.

First, make the best use of your available space. The index should be set in 8 or 9 point type and is most efficient at six columns across the page. While that will force some people’s entries onto second lines of type, most entries will still fit on a single line — and you gain 60 or more lines for each additional column you add. If you’ve been doing a 10 pt. index in four columns per page and you switch to 9 pt. type and 12 columns across the spread (six per page), you’ll be able to return a spread or more to your coverage allocations.

Remember, the index needs to be as easy to use as possible. Three decisions that make looking at narrow columns of names and numbers over and over easier would be the use of the hanging indent, directory-style entries and emphasis faces.

To achieve the hanging indent, highlight the text after it has been flowed into the columns on your index pages. Set the left margin at 1 or 1p6 (depending on the size of type and the font. Make sure to print out both options at 100 percent before you decide which measure is right for you.) and have each “first” time start at negative that measure; this will create an even left margin along the left side of the column on every line except for those that continue an entry.

All continuations will then indent by the set amount, making it easy to find names only along the left margin.

The great index borrows its next device from the telephone directory. Rather than have six entries that begin with Basketball on the left margin, the index editor will manually override the setting so that Basketball hits the left margin only once and each of the following lines (boys’ frosh/soph, boys’ junior varsity, boys’ varsity and girls’ frosh/soph, girls’ junior varsity, girls’ varsity and the appropriate page numbers) follows the indent. Again, this is done simply because it makes the index easy to use.

Make the index even easier to use by creating distinctions between the kinds of entries. You can use all caps, bold face, italics and any combination of those to set apart members of the senior class, classes, clubs and events, advertisers and spread topics. While this will require the index editor to format each entry separately, it creates an index that is more usable than any other. If you do this, include a key at the start of the index so the readers will know that all caps entries will all be spread topics, anything that is boldfaced is a senior entry, all italicized entries are teams and clubs, etc.

East Lansing High School, East Lansing, MI

In the past you waited until the book was complete and all pages had been proofed to build and create the index. If you found misspelled names on pages that had already been submitted it was too late to correct them.

Part of the magic of HJ Index Builder is that you can run it beginning with your first deadline — and it will remember the changes you make. So, when you complete your that first batch of pages, run HJ Index Builder before you submit. If anyone’s name is spelled wrong, simply open the page file and make the correction. When you run HJ Index Builder the next time, it will add the page number to the correct name and eliminate the erroneous entry. More importantly, you decrease your chance for error because the name will be spelled correctly when the page first arrives at the plant.

And, instead of tediously creating a list of students who have appeared more than your staff’s quota, HJ Index Builder can be used to help avoid overcovering the same students deadline after deadline. By getting into the habit of running all pages through HJ Index Builder to confirm the correct spelling of names before pages are submitted, you will always have a current index which shows you how many pages each student in your school appears on. The index editor can conclude his or her work after each deadline by creating a list of students who should not appear in candids or be randomly quoted again.

Brentwood High School, Brentwood, CA

Now that HJ Index Builder has removed much of the work involved with creating an index for your yearbook, choose an index editor who can make a difference by catching misspellings before they appear in the book and making the index the best tool it can be for your readers.

Yearbook Discoveries Vol. 12 Issue 2