What we say when we talk about indexing

Happy National Indexing Day 2026! Today is all about encouraging people to think about indexes (those incredibly useful things at the back of books and other publications that direct readers to the good stuff), and the people (those incredibly useful things with creative, thinking minds) who write them for a living. So, to gear us up for a day of talking about indexing, a group of professional indexers met on Zoom to discuss what we say when we talk about indexing.

Firstly, quite a surprising number of us reported that when we tell people that we’re indexers, they look blankly at us and ask ‘What’s that?’ What we say in reply:

Like members of other niche professions, we often have to explain what it is that we do, and why you need a skilled person to do it.

The next most common thing we are asked is ‘Can’t a computer do that?’ or more likely these days, ‘Can’t AI do that?’ Here’s what we say:

‘So what do you do all day?’ people might ask a professional indexer. Well, the answer is, we read the text (every word, sometimes more than once); we think about what indexing terms to use and how to structure the index (we frequently change our minds); we think about our clients and our readers and what they need from our work; we edit our indexes so that they make the best use of the available space in the book; and on top of all that, we do all the things that other small business owners do to keep their enterprises going (marketing, CPD, accounting, filing our tax returns…)

An interesting question that comes up from time to time is ‘Surely the best person to write the index is the author of the book?’ Here’s what we say to that:

But an index is just a list of words with page numbers attached, right? Wrong. We’re all about making things easier for the reader, and a long list of words with a long list of numbers is not helpful to anyone. Indexers select the terms that are relevant to a reader’s needs and present them in ways that make them easy to find. Can a computer do that?

Which brings me to the last question that was discussed at our meeting, but also perhaps to the most important that we are ever asked: ‘Why does my book need an index?’ We say:

For writers and publishers who value the books they produce, an expert professional index produced by an expert professional indexer will enhance the quality of your book and make it more attractive and useful to your readers. Find the right indexer in our Professional Directory, and explore the indexing commissioning process in our blog series.

Ruth Martin is a Fellow of the Society of Indexers and specialises in law, politics and economics although she has a growing list of literary criticism books on her indexing CV. She has served on the Society’s Executive Board, as well as its Marketing and CPD Committees. In 2021, she won the Institute of Certified Indexers’ Purple Pen award for newly accredited indexers. Ruth facilitates our monthly Zoom coffee mornings which cover all aspects of indexing practice; this blog post draws on the discussion at a recent meeting.

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