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"Susan W. Gallagher" <sgallagher5 -at- cox -dot- net> wrote in message news:212593 -at- techwr-l -dot- -dot- -dot-
>
> I bought Horton's Online book when it first came out and
> refuse to buy anything else by him until he learns to index!
>
Not to defend Horton, but I have to ask: was the indexing done by him?
I do believe that many, if not most, book publishers have professional
indexers in their employ to perform that task.
Indexing is in many ways a Black Art, and even many of the best writers
cannot create even adequate indexes.
As a side note, I once submitted a manual I had written to a local STC
competition. The feedback I remember was "not one page of inxed for every 10
pages of content (this for a 60-odd page book with many illustrations among
the procedures). I was bothered not because I didn't win, nor by the
criticism itself (which I generally value), but that the criticism was
quantitative rather than qualitative.
