Re: Looking for classes in indexing

["Peter Neilson" <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>]

I frown at some subentries, where the reader is looking for a term, but  
does not know how the indexer categorized it.

You are looking for peach melba, hoping to find a recipe that you can use  
for making peach melba pie. Can't find it! It's not a top-level entry in  
the index. Where to look next? Pies? It's not their either. Ahhh, finally!

Puddings
  About 236
  Banana, 240, 255
  Chocolate, 275
  Custard, See Custards
  Lemon, 241
  Peach, 243
  Peach Melba, 255
  Vanilla, 238

Why does it have to be a subentry and not a main entry? You have to read  
the entire index, maybe two or three times, to find it.

On the other hand, some subentries are a good thing. I particularly like  
the index in Rombauer & Becker's "Joy of Cooking," which uses subentries  
carefully, and which often has an "About" subentry as shown above with  
puddings. It removes the desire to have a page entry for the heading.

Unfortunately, although "About" is a "top of the list" item in English, it  
fares poorly in some other languages. In German it is probably "Um". Fast  
am Ende des deutschen Alphabets.


On Wed, 25 Jul 2018 16:55:36 -0400, <dick -at- rlhamilton -dot- net> wrote: